Afton
by Brale913
Summary: Business partner, loving father, child murderer, vengeful spirit. This is a contrived retelling of William Afton's rise, fall, and refusal to let mistakes lie where they belong. Rated M for Murder.
1. Chapter 1

**Afton**

**Chapter 1**

**1977**

As dusk fell, a wispy group of clouds meandered across the sky above a small concrete building with a brightly colored marquee advertising pizza, fun, and a yellow bear adorned with purple hat and bowtie. The parking lot was scattered with a small handful of cars, each of a muted color, and four tall steel columns supported dim, flickering floodlights to keep the darkening landscape somewhat illuminated. Light glowed from within the handful of windows on the front of the building, highlighting a small red-painted curb and a wrought-iron trash can stuffed with paper plates, streamers, popped balloons, and wrapping paper. The marquee, with a handful of burned-out incandescent bulbs bordering dim neon art depicting the yellow bear, indicated the restaurant's name to be Fredbear's Family Diner.

Beyond the apple-red doors of the restaurant lay its main dining area, a party room decorated with a dark blue carpet spattered with woven spots and speckles of various colors; round tables surrounded by four folding aluminum chairs apiece; vibrant multicolored balloons, each labeled "Happy Birthday!" or "Celebrate!"; and a wooden stage, hosting a single animatronic in the shape and colors of the caricature on the marquee. The dozen or so children visiting the establishment, chaperoned by half as many adults, were all crowded around the stage, singing along to the animatronic's pre-recorded songs.

To the right of a stage stood a door, and beyond that door resided the office, where the building's owner sat at a desk, poring over stacks of paper sourced from the P.O. box in town. Most were bills requiring payment, some were thank-you letters, some were addressed to 'Fredbear,' the animatronic on the stage. The man sighed.

"What am I going to tell Charlie?" He sighed, resting his face in his hands.

Outside the building, a vehicle pulled into the lot, its driver glancing back and forth between a spiral-bound atlas of maps for the area and the scene beyond the windshield, pulling into a stall and parking the vehicle. He checked the atlas and a paper flyer once again, then exited the car and headed into the building. He stood at the back of the room, watching the children and their parents enjoying the animatronic, then clapping as the curtain descended. The crowd shifted to the tables, all giggling and yelping with excitement about the show that had just ended. The man slipped across the room and knocked twice on the door by the stage, stepping through without a moment's further worry.

The man at the desk lifted his head from his hands at hearing the knocks, watching as a well-dressed, purple-suited man stepped across the threshold of the doorway and closed the door, leaving the two of them in the room. The man at the desk stood to face the intruder.

"This room is off-limits to all but the employees," the man at the desk said. "Oh, pardon," the man in purple said. He had a light overseas lilt to his speech. "I merely wanted to speak with the owner of this establishment. I presume that to be you?"

"Yes, that is I. How might I help you?"

"Ah, well, I'd heard about your humble establishment from the locals after moving here. Many of them spoke fondly of their childrens' experience here, but commented that the experience was...underwhelming."

The man at the desk remained silent.

"Families tell me they had a less than favorable experience with the food, and the size of the venue means large parties are impossible for local schools to negotiate. The building itself appears to need some work, but the animatronic is astonishing: extremely well-designed and built, by my casual observation."

Still, the man at the desk remained silent.

"What I had hoped, through my interaction with the town and through you, was to offer you a proposal, a business venture. I'm interested in learning from you how you run your business, how your animatronic functions, and how you'd like to go about making the location bigger, perhaps expand into a franchise?"

"If you're talking about buying me out-"

"Oh, no no, my good sir. I would never want to overstep that line and deprive you of the business you have already established. No, I would much prefer to enter a partnership with you. You seem like you could do with some help managing the business, and I would be interested in learning where and how you conceived and developed the concept behind Fredbear...that is its name, yes?"

"His name, and yes." The man at the desk sat down at his chair, leaning back. "Why are you interested in this, of all businesses in the area?"

"It's unique. Nothing else in this area even remotely resembles a diner home to an animatronic on a stage. The concept is good, but I see massive unexplored potential in this business, and I'd like to offer you the funds to accomplish just that."

"And what do you want in return?"

"To be a part of your brand. Quite frankly, every business needs to generate income in order to stay viable, and I am interested in contributing investments and ideas into your business to grow its income for both of us. I'm sure you've always wanted to have more than just the one animatronic, right?"

The man at the desk stood, eyes flicking to the clock over the door. Closing time. "Walk with me while I wave my guests out."

They stepped out of the office and stood in front of the stage, waving at the departing families. With the door locked and the windows shuttered, the man from the desk slipped behind the stage curtains and flipped a switch on the wall, parting the red velvet fabric once more. There stood the immaculate golden bear, his purple bowtie and top hat sparkling under the subdued stage lights, eyes gazing with a thousand yard stare at a point off in the distance. The man in purple slowly circled the animatronic, stroking his chin.

"Fascinating."

"It's not just a robot," the man from the desk said. He held what looked to be some sort of stainless steel hook in his hand, which he used to free the bear's head from its neck joint. He set the head on the stage, then separated the torso from the hips. Using the hook, the springs holding the animatronic skeleton in place were compressed, pulling the rods, joints, and wires to the outsides of the shells. The man from the desk stepped into the legs, then compressed the torso's skeleton and slipped it onto his body. With one final hook, he slipped the head onto his own and stepped backward, unhooking the feet from a pair of mounting brackets on the stage floor. He then posed for the man in purple.

"All of the money I had was invested in this suit. I designed and patented the suit, then had a machine shop across the country fabricate the parts for me. The skeleton is held out of the way with spring-loaded locks so that I can take on the personality and appearance of Fredbear. All of his voice-lines are done by me, so that if I become him, the children don't realize the difference."

The man in purple gaped at the golden bear shuffling around the stage, the pleather skin of the segments posing in a variety of different maneuvers that should have been impossible for a normal robot to achieve.

"I assume you and very few others know of this potential for the suit?"

"As of right now, only two people in the world know the full details of this suit, and two of them are standing in this room."

The suit was repositioned on the stage, its piece-by-piece removal followed with a hooking of the spring-loaded locks to restore the skeleton to its proper location in the suit. The shift from suit to animatronic took less than five minutes to accomplish, and the man in purple continued watching in fascination.

"Now I'm more convinced than ever that I want to help this business to blossom. What would it take to create a second of these?"

"I'm not selling you-"

"No, no, my friend. I want to be a part of what you just demonstrated. I want to partner with you. I want to grow this concept, this beautiful idea."

"Why this of all things?"

"As I said, it's unique. And between my parents and a business I used to run in college, I gained a modest inheritance before I came to the states."

The man in purple held out his hand.

"I'd like to partner with you. To give this business the chance it deserves."

The man from the desk hesitated for a moment. He reached out his hand. "No funny business."

"None at all," replied the man in purple.

The handshake was complete.

"Now," said the man in purple, "what can I call you?"

"Henry. Henry Davis. And what should I call you?"

The man in purple lowered his hand, a grin splitting his face. "Most people back home called me Afton. You can call me William."

* * *

_**A/N:** So it used to be that I was quite active on this site, and that has since dramatically fallen off. I've given my time away some thought, and decided that I would come back to writing (after not having touched it for years) if I could come up with a story to tell. And what better story to try and piece together than the story behind one of the most elusive horror games in the history of gaming?_

_I have spent several days reviewing lore, timelines, continuity, artistic choices, trailers, teaser images, phone calls, you name it. I've constructed my own version of events which should more-or-less be accurate to as much of the information presented in the games as is possible, with the exception of one major continuity error created by animdude himself the likes of which I cannot immediately rectify outside of cutting his Gordian's knot. Some of the information will intentionally be inaccurate from what is generally accepted to be "canon" because, although I don't mind the spaghetti of the story, some elements are impossible to align, and one is the aforementioned circular error in continuity. If you would like, I can do a dive at the end of each chapter to explore what issues arose while constructing the chain of events in that particular chapter. _

_As for this chapter, there are two "errors" I will claim:  
\- Afton may well have known Henry for longer than I've indicated here, which I am willing to fudge due to a thing called "artistic license"  
\- Henry's canonically-accepted "last name" based on the book series is "Emily," which isn't inherently problematic aside from being a highly uncommon last name (and the books being an "alternative universe" reimagining of the story). As such, I have given him a name consistent with the 1940's-1950's, the time period in which I believe he would/could have been born to be accurate to the story.  
_

_Hopefully I'll have something more written soon and can thus make a second chapter for your viewing. Don't expect them to be long, unlike much of my prior work. -Brale_


	2. Chapter 2

**Afton **

**Chapter 2 **

**1978**

Henry continued sketching designs for a new character on a massive sheet of butcher's paper, labeling details as he went: hinged jaw, hinged eyelids, pneumatic linkages, even different sockets for each of the limbs. He heard muffled cheering from outside as the music started up, and the door popped open for a brief moment to allow his business partner into the room, a light sheen of perspiration on the man's forehead. Henry glanced over.

"Suit still working alright?"

William chuckled, dropping into a chair beside the door, his torso leaning against a filing cabinet. "Still doesn't quite fit me the right way, what with being shorter than you."

"Don't count on that always being a problem. Remember, the new suit should be here any day."

"Have you announced that a new character will be added to the performances?"

Henry paused, setting his pencil atop the drawing. "I thought it might be better to slowly phase the character in as a 'soft opening' of sorts. Make sure he's well-received with the children, give him a show or two independent of Fredbear, and then push the bigger advertising to gain popularity."

"Agreed. We have the funds to do it, but we wouldn't want the children to be upset by the new character. By the way, I think having that kitchen added out the back to serve pizza was a great idea, other than having to dodge the chefs on the way in and out of here while they deliver the pizzas."

"It was the best we could do with the space we added. The only other option was to move everything around, remember?"

"Yes, I know, I recall. We would need to shut down for an indefinite period of time to really get the building zoned and constructed properly to solve the problem, but then we'd be losing money."

"How are the funds, by the way?"

William straightened a bit in the chair, redirecting the nearby desk fan's airflow onto his face. "We've enough for that property in the city, if that's what you mean."

Henry blinked. His hand, which had been reaching back for the pencil, froze in the air.

"The one we visited a couple weeks back? It's still listed, and the price dropped another five-kay."

"And that...is still within our budget?"

"I'll have to get creative about how I manage the bank, but yes. That property and three animatronic characters, assuming they have the same price tag as the past two."

"What about a fourth character?" He held up his sketch for William to see.

"A duck?"

"Chick. Baby chicken. We have three male designs worked out, so why not a female? and why not something like a bird?"

William furrowed his brow, gazing at the sketches. "Were you intending the suits to be wearable?"

"I was." Henry laid the designs back on his desk. William scratched his head.

"A fourth wearable animatronic would be outside our range if we want that building."

Henry frowned. "I suppose we could go for static figures, then."

William stood up. "Absolutely not! Stage-mounted animatronics? What are we, a rip-off of Wally World?! No, we need something cutting-edge, something more...robust."

He gazed at Henry's designs for the chick. "What about a feature that allows the animatronic to freely roam the restaurant?"

Henry cast a sidelong glance at William. "Do you have any idea how unbelievably dangerous that would be? These are machines, industrial-grade machines. Not only would I have no idea how to power the things, their exterior plates could crush a child's hands, and their internals could cause plenty of harm to the children. Besides, think about how heavy they would have to be to stay upright and be capable of motion."

William sat back down. "Fredbear isn't a dangerous design."

"Not when he's being worn by a human, no. As an animatronic capable of movement, even as a fixed character on a stage, he is absolutely dangerous."

"Why so?"

"For the same reasons I've mentioned."

"No, no, why isn't it dangerous as a suit?"

"For one thing, a human is operating it. We are far more sensitive to our environments than an automated machine. For another, we don't have sharp objects inside the suit shells. Just flesh. For a third, we don't have to weigh nearly as much as a machine because we have muscle fiber supporting us."

William kept his eyes trained on Henry. "What if you set about making them?"

"That's what I've been doing."

"No, not just sketching. Actually building them."

Henry gave William a blank stare. The man in the chair cleared his throat.

"It's cheaper to source materials and work them ourselves, and you have the technical expertise to work them into the shapes we need. If we source casts and molds for the skeletons, which are all roughly the same size and weight, we can cast them out of lighter materials for the same cost, which reduces weight. We cover the innards with something child-friendly, maybe a fabric or a foam, and we continue making the shells out of soft, pliant materials to keep their hands and feet safe. Even the mechanicals for moving the animatronics can be controlled and made safe, and we can power them through induction plates beneath the flooring to keep the children safe."

"You aren't suggesting making a skeleton out of titanium or magnesium, are you?"

"I'm only suggesting that you teach me how to work with the materials and we hand-craft these robots ourselves."

Henry was silent for a moment, the pencil suspended above the paper. "Do you know where we could get the material?"

William smiled. "I can make a few phonecalls."

"So we'd need to have the shop make the molds for the skeletons and probably the insides of the shells, because the shells are made of soft plastic and covered in porous foam and fuzzy fabric."

"Materials can all be sourced, my friend. Again, I can make a few phonecalls."

"What is the benefit to this, again?"

"Better robots for more or less the same price, minus the initial cost to buy the castings. We'd have to delay adding this design," he gestured at the chick, "until after we make some profit at the new location. You also get total control over everything, from design down to programming."

"And what do you want from it? You don't scheme like this for free."

"If other clients or I decide to utilize the castings for other projects, we may, at my discretion. Our business takes priority, but additional businesses and revenue will earn favor as well."

"But that will cut into our market."

"Ah, but not with the upcharge. You won't owe me anything because you have an exclusive contract with Afton Robotics."

"Afton...Robotics?"

"The additional company I am proposing, yes. Our business will take precedence over Afton Robotics, so you'll always have first say over molds, casts, materials, designs, everything. All patented technology you've used for your spring-loaded animatronic suits will be yours to retain, as will any other technical design aspects you elect to incorporate into future builds. I'll handle the technicalities, you just keep designing and creating as you have."

Henry's mind began churning. "Afton Robotics, huh? That makes you the one in charge."

"But as a co-owner-operator of this business of family entertainment restaurants, that gives you more power over your business and, as I said, primary access to mine."

Henry's hand began to itch with potential. "And this will work?"

"Let me make some phonecalls."

William moved to stand, but paused. "Oh, right. That actually brings up something else I've been meaning to mention." He sat back down. "If we do this, which I assume you now want, we should come up with a Limited Liability Company or somehow establish a company so that we are no longer a joint proprietorship. While I trust that the machines will be built with the care and safety you've demonstrated up to this point, we should be headed under some sort of corporate organization, something that will allow us to branch out if desired, franchise this business, turn it into a national success beyond our vision for state-wide success. Fredbear Entertainment, perhaps?"

Henry shuffled some papers around, drawing up another sketch of a character. He circled a word on the page: Fazbear.

"Fazbear Entertainment. Fredbear is a great character, but he is my character. This new wave here will start with the head of the new restaurant, Freddy Fazbear, and the restaurant will be Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria. If we're going to go corporate with this thing, we should become Fazbear Entertainment."

William nodded, the grin back on his face. "Fazbear Entertainment. Very tasteful. I'll get the paperwork started shortly."

A knock sounded on the street-facing office door. Henry opened the heavy steel door and was faced with a sweaty delivery driver standing in front of a massive crate.

"Uh, delivery for a Mister Afton or Mister Davis?"

"Davis, right here." Henry signed for the crate, the glee evident on his face. The delivery driver got back in his truck and peeled out of the parking lot, leaving the men to crack the crate open. Inside, protected by layers of close-cell foam and bubble wrap, was a yellow rabbit with a purple bowtie, a pair of black buttons on its chest glittering under the sunlight. Henry clapped William on the shoulder.

"William, meet Bonnie the Bunny, your new best friend."

William grinned. "Bonnie. Spring Bonnie, for the springs in his sides."

"And the spring in his step. Let's move it inside so we can think about preparing for your debut."

And with much grunting and heaving, the animatronic was carried inside and sat in one of the office chairs, its big day becoming the focus of their conversation until late in the evening.

* * *

**_A/N:_**_ Had an idea, ran with it. It is a rare sight to update twice in one day, but the chapters are short and intentionally open-ended because, while I could spend my time describing the characters more and really fleshing out a story, I'm more invigorated by the plot than by the character design. Besides, this way you can all fill in the blanks on your own if you'd like._

_Spring Bonnie is described according to what most commonly pops up on Google Images and somewhat reflects the VR title's antagonist, Glitchtrap. The "Spring Bonnie" title isn't something I can confirm as a canon name outside of the FNAF 3 phone-calls, but I will likely continue referring to it as such to avoid confusion with the OG Bonnie animatronic._

_Logically, it makes sense (to me) that Spring Bonnie be added after Fredbear is established, as we see both animatronics in the FNAF 4 minigames. TECHNICALLY, it could be added after the first location is opened according to the "Fredbear and Friends" advertisement on the television in those minigames, but I'm not splitting hairs over that. The logical inconsistency here is that the animatronic is not present in the "Take Cake" minigame from FNAF 2, but my justification for including him anyways is that the minigame was more meant to indicate a small location rather than specifically one without Spring Bonnie._

_Afton Robotics must be established early in the story for continuity's sake, same as Fazbear Entertainment. I believe somewhere along the phone-calls, "Fredbear's Family Diner" is mentioned (FNAF 2) but nothing is said of the company being bought out by Fazbear Entertainment, necessarily. Besides, a "buy-out" can simply be a former owner relicensing his/her own business under a new corporate entity; I almost bought a business earlier this year and had to do something similar in creating a DBA (Doing Business As) under my parents' LLC. _

_Originally I was going to tell this story from the perspective of an outside observer, but I nixed that idea pretty quickly. While it would have filled in a gap in the storyline (which I will address; in fact, there are a handful of gaps relating to our two characters that will need to be mentioned in these notes), it would not have made for a good story-telling experience._

_Anyways, I'll keep writing. Unless someone tells me to stop, I'll probably continue with my continuity logic in these footnotes. Each chapter will start by indicating the year in which it takes place, though not every chapter will have a different year; these are organized by key events in the title character's history rather than by year alone. -Brale_


	3. Chapter 3

**Afton **

**Chapter 3 **

**1979**

William watched Henry pluck a cable from the back of the Foxy animatronic's head, the light returning to its irises as its systems booted back into operation. "All three animatronics should now be ready for this. Are we ready to record?"

William nodded. "The cameras are set, the room is ready. The kids are ready, too."

"They know that they won't really be interacting with the actual animatronic programming, right?"

"I hadn't thought to tell them about that. We'll have to go over it with them."

"Wait, you didn't prep them with the script?"

"No, I wasn't aware we were using one."

Henry smacked his forehead. "Damnit, that'll be its own headache then."

"I can't imagine anything going as wrong as you're suggesting. They'll be fine with a bit of improv."

Henry shook his head, reaching through the gap between the animatronic's head and torso to flick a switch on the back of its endoskeleton skull. The animatronic stood up, gaze focused on Henry as much as its robotic camera-driven irises could manage. Its auto-calibration process fired through its circuits and tested the tension of the springs and limits of the servo-motors, resulting in what mimicked an athlete performing warm-up stretches.

"Foxy, follow."

Henry stepped from the service room, the fox following him on steps that failed to adequately express its true weight, a feature Henry had been meticulous about designing properly to keep their movements fluid and their chassis light. William followed the canid animatronic into the dining area, where it stopped alongside a similarly-sized and programmed brown bear and purplish-blue rabbit. William stepped around them to finally get a good look at the animals as they would appear to the public: they stood still save for the whirring of the fans cooling their logical processors and the light buzz coming from the speakers in their torsos, hidden just out of sight near the neck holes.

"Bonnie, voice check."

From within the rabbit's torso resonated a sprightly, if a bit tinny, voice: "Speaker check for Bonnie, testing one two, testing three four, here we are ready to go!"

Footsteps echoed from down one of the halls leading to the party room. A young girl with long brown hair and large eyes came running into the room, followed by a preteen, a small blonde girl, and a smaller brown-haired boy. Wide-eyes stepped right up in front of the rabbit, staring at its chin. The robot tilted its head down to 'look' at the girl.

"Well, hello there young lady! ...what is your name?"

"My name is Charlotte Emily Davis, but you may call me Charlie," she said in a clear voice. Henry nodded once, expressing his approval.

"Charlie," Bonnie repeated. "Nice to meet you, Charlie!"

Henry turned to Freddy, repeating his instructions. The voice check from the bear had a deeper voice, one that had a distinct purr made more prominent by the tinny noise of the speakers. The bear focused its attention on Charlie while Henry moved on to Foxy, leaving the two to interact. Once all three animatronics had successfully learned her name, the preteen stepped up.

"So, what are we doing with these?"

"These are the new mascots for the restaurant," William explained. "James, you are looking at some of Mister Davis's most advanced animatronics, arguably the most incredible pieces of machinery designed purely for entertainment."

"I'd rather be home playing my Atari."

"You don't need to be in the video if you don't want. Elizabeth, Michael, do you want to be in the video?"

Michael hid behind William's leg, earning a chuckle from his father. Elizabeth jumped up and down, her bouncy gold hair tossing in all directions.

"Alright, well, I think we can do this with three kids and three mascots. Charlie, you already know what to do, so this will be a repeat for you." Henry adjusted his tie, turning to stand alongside the robots and make eye contact with the children. "You heard Charlie give her name to Bonnie..."

"Well, hi there!"

"...Freddy..."

"Hello, hello!"

"...and Foxy."

"Yarr, me hearties!"

"Those cameras over there," he pointed, "will be recording your interactions with these three. All you have to do is pick one to be your new friend, tell him your name when he asks, and have a conversation with him. Your dad and I will handle the rest, alright?"

Elizabeth nodded. After a moment, her brother Michael did as well. Henry snapped his fingers, causing all three bots to turn toward him.

"That reminds me, I just got these things in for us! Wait here."

He jogged back into the service room. William watched as Charlie and Elizabeth began having a conversation with Freddy, but the robot's limited database of information left the girls' questions mostly unanswered. William stepped away, Michael still trailing behind him, to turn on the cameras and begin recording footage for the commercial. Henry came jogging out of the room, a set of plush toys in his hands. William recognized the set as the merchandise he'd sourced months prior. "Ladies, Michael, today you'll each be interacting with one of our three animal friends. Each of you will need to pick one of our friends.

"I pick Foxy!" Charlie said.

"Bonnie!" said Elizabeth.

"And I guess that leaves Michael with Freddy. That alright, bud?"

He nodded.

"Okay, so, if the Afton family can go stand off over there a bit...yes, right there," Henry instructed. "Charlie, come stand here."

She stood where asked, gaze fixed on the robots. Henry called for them to stand out of the frame, opposite the Afton family.

"Alright, so here's how this is going to work. Fredbear is here today."

James was unimpressed, but the other three children perked up at the mention of their friend.

"Fredbear wants us to get to know his friends Bonnie, Freddy, and Foxy, but in order to do that we want to make sure he's in this as well. So, Charlie, will you practice with me?"

She nodded.

"I will act like Fredbear for right now; I'll go get him in a minute. So what we want, Charlie, Elizabeth, Michael, is for Fredbear to offer you the stuffed animal you picked."

Henry set the Bonnie and Freddy plush dolls on the floor by their respective animatronics, stepping into the camera's frame with the Foxy doll in his hand. He held it out toward Charlie, who reached up.

"So Fredbear will hand you the stuffed animal, and you'll just reach up and take it, and then you'll look down at the stuffed animal."

Charlie did as instructed. Henry then stepped back.

"William, we're gonna need a bit of a camera pan in a sec. Care to help?"

William moved into place behind one of the cameras; his children remained in their spot off to the side. Henry repositioned Foxy behind Charlie.

"And then what will happen is Fredbear will help direct your friend to get your attention. Foxy, tap Charlie's shoulder."

The fox bent slightly at the waist, tucking one of his arms behind his back, which William noted was tipped with a foam hook. With the other hand, the animatronic gave two light taps to Charlie's shoulder. She spun around, still holding the doll, but now looking at the face of the matching robot.

"William, while that's happening, you'll gradually pan out so that the kiddo and the animal are both in the shot."

William offered him a thumbs up from behind the camera, having already done so.

"Then Fredbear will direct your friend some more. Foxy, offer Charlie a hug."

The fox slid down to both knees, a fluid, almost perfect replication of human movement, and stretched both arms open. Charlie seemed to run at the fox for her hug, hanging on with all the strength her child arms could offer. The robot, William noted, was careful not to crush the child, nor to lift her from the floor.

"And that's basically the big part of it done. We'll have you three stand in front of your friends and Fredbear at the very end to make sure we get a shot of everyone waving, but that's easy."

"Will you be waving, dad?" Charlie asked.

"No, sweetie, you kids and your friends are the stars today. Michael, Elizabeth, are you ready to try it with Fredbear?"

Elizabeth nodded. Michael had his thumb in his mouth and seemed nervous.

"Foxy, stand up."

The robot returned to its previous upright stance, once again so fluid it almost looked human. William felt astonishment that his friend had achieved such a deceptive level of fluidity in motion with robotics; even his developing knowledge of animatronic technology was no match for the quality Henry had achieved.

The service room door banged open, this time revealing the yellow bear with his purple accessories, occupied by none other than Henry, not that any of the children save James were aware of what they were seeing. In perfect character within the spring-lock suit, Henry's voice, distorted by the mask and the voice-changing electronic module installed in the suit, echoed from within the chest of the yellow bear.

"Well, hi there, kids! Are you ready to have some fun with Bonnie, Freddy, and Foxy?"

Charlie and Elizabeth both squealed and began jumping up and down in excitement. Even Michael looked happy, a welcome change in William's book.

"Alright, well, your dad told me we had some really important stuff to do today, so we should probably get that done first, huh?"

Elizabeth sat down, every bit the compliant young lady William had been raising her to be. Michael had remained in his spot. Charlie moved back to where Henry had told her to stand, facing toward the yellow bear and away from the stock-still red fox.

"Alright, Charlie. May I have the stuffed animal back for a moment?"

She complied. "Thank you, sweetie. Now, are you ready?"

She nodded. Henry handed the plush back to her, issuing the same commands to Foxy but in Fredbear's voice. Charlie was the picture of perfection for her part.  
"Well done, both of you! Alright Charlie, go switch spots with Elizabeth. Foxy, please switch places with Bonnie."

The animatronics moved in a line directly toward each other, but side-stepped both each other and the children at their ankles without colliding with anything. With Bonnie in position, the entire act was repeated with Elizabeth.

That is, until she climbed up Bonnie's arm and onto his back.

"Eliz-"

Henry had moved to stand beside William, as he had during Charlie's shot, and poked his friend in the arm with his yellow animatronic hand. "Shh. They're non-violent," came the murmur from within the suit, undetected by the voice changer. "I'll get her off of the bot, but he won't move without my direction right now. It's fine."

Elizabeth was cheering and waving the plush in the air; the bot, for its part, had tilted its head as though attempting to observe her, its ears tucked forward out of her reach.  
"Whoopsie, Elizabeth," said Fredbear. "We don't want to hurt Bonnie with our piggy-back, do we?"

She apologized, both to Fredbear and to Bonnie, sliding back down the animatronic's arm and giving it a hug for her mistake.

"I think Bonnie will be okay. Thank you Elizabeth. Now, Michael, are you ready for your turn?"

The young boy, no older than five, crept toward the spot indicated by Fredbear.

"Bonnie, please switch places with Freddy."

The animatronics complied. Fredbear repeated the plush handoff, taking his position beside William to watch and direct Freddy. However, when the bear tapped Michael on the shoulder, the boy began crying. William moved to step away from the camera, but Henry held him back: Freddy had already dropped not just to one knee, but to both, arms resting on thighs, face level with the back of Michael's crying head.

"Hey there, Michael," Freddy purred. "You look a little bit scared there, buddy. Are you scared of me?"

Michael turned a bit, giving Freddy what William guessed was an honest look. The boy nodded, small tilts of his head that the robot managed to capture.

"Well, y'know...sometimes when I'm scared of something, I just want to cry and hide, just like you. But y'know what always makes me feel better? A big, cozy hug from a friend. Won't you give me a hug, Michael?"

The bear's arms slid open, the same as the rabbit and fox, but Henry had played no part in initiating the interaction. Henry stared, equal parts fascinated and horrified, at the scene in front of him, and continued to gape as his son turned to give the bear a tentative hug, the fear gradually replaced with comfort.

"Good job, both of you!" Fredbear stepped back into the frame, clapping lightly with both hands. Even James couldn't resist clapping alongside the girls at the simple interaction they'd watched.

"I think now," the yellow bear continued, "it's time for us all to wave at the camera from here. Michael, Freddy, can you both stand up please?"

The animatronic waited for the boy to release his grip and step back before resuming a standing position. With a bit more direction, the bots and children were arranged into a passable example of an ensemble, waving at the camera as William zoomed in and out with slow, deliberate movements. Fredbear then retired to the back, allowing Henry to join his daughter and the Aftons back in the dining room.

"Hey, Foxy, I think the kids could do with a story about pirates and adventure," Henry called.

"Yarr, I think ye be right, Mistah Davis. Now," the fox barked, dropping to a crouch, arms spread wide, "what say I tell ye maties about me brave battle against the captain of the Flyin' Dutchman, Davy Jones himself?"

As the fox got on with his story, Henry directed the robots to step away from the noise. He reached into each of them and flicked a couple of switches and buttons on the back of their endoskeleton skulls.

"Freddy probably didn't need that reset, but that'll put both of these units back into their normal operating mode, which means they'll be much more free to interact and move around per their programming."

"Henry, time out. What the devil did I just watch with my son?"

"You watched Freddy following his programming. They don't feel anything per se, but they are capable of recognizing a handful of common emotions and responding to them: anger, sorrow, joy, and fear being the big four. I was a bit limited with what I could do, given their size and need for constant energy, but their suits are lined with transistors and memory banks specifically designed to identify and analyze people and a broad sense of their emotional states. They will never forget our children because, as you saw by Charlie's example, they are programmed to commit a name to a picture provided by their digital retina. Ideally, they will also never forget any children, ever, but that relies on your Japanese technology working at its fullest, since they store their catalog of recent human encounters within their suits and parse their older encounters out to the safe room's memory banks via internal antennae. They can recall older encounters, but it takes time."

"Facial recognition, fluid movement, wireless interfacing, is there anything you didn't think of?"

"Probably. I can't think of everything, but I hope that, at least for a first attempt, they're sufficient."

"You had me wondering if perhaps you'd hired three people to operate them as suits. They move so well."

"That wouldn't be possible if you hadn't introduced me to induction. I'm limited by instantaneous power draw, but they each have small battery cells on board that recharge between drastic movements to help with the draw. Really, William, your ability to source material is the only reason these three have become possible."

"Do you have the fourth one's designs finalized?"

"Once we get some funding out of this establishment, I'll be able to finish purchasing the resources necessary to program her and skin her. The skeleton is ready, but the rest is not."

William nodded. "She should be introduced shortly after we open, then?"

"If your projected estimates go well."

"If the public realizes what a major accomplishment these machines are, you will have done the hard work for me."

"Speaking of work, I'm off to go splice that film together and record a handful of voice-overs and some music. Once that commercial goes live, the restaurant will be open. This summer, William."

"Summer it is," he replied. Rather than follow his friend to the back, he opted to sit with the children and listen to a story about a tentacled man, his pet giant squid, and a massive entanglement over the mid-Atlantic ocean that had him reminiscing about the simplicity of childhood and his desire for the business to succeed.

* * *

_**A/N:**_ _So, here we have the next segment. I had to check my notes, the internet, and the books three separate times to be sure I had everything correct here; wouldn't want to confuse things._

_'James' is not the older brother's canon name. Originally I was going to have him tell the story of his family, but I decided against that for logic's sake: how could he have known every detail of what happened with his family? 'James' is/was a common name for the time period and fits the role of the character. _

_According to FNAF 6's "back alley" scenes, the image featuring Lefty also features a poster containing a man dressed in purple, his dummy, a clown, and a bear with a collar. One of the large debates about this series is whether or not Michael is the Crying Child or the Foxy Brother, both of which are featured in FNAF 4. If we assume the older brother, 'James,' is in fact Michael, the line "I'm going to come find you" from the end of Sister Location's custom night makes sense, as Michael would effectively be following in his father's footsteps, although likely would not be doing so to repeat his father's crimes (rather, to fix them). However, this gives us a snag: Sister Location's custom night cutscenes depict Michael as being gutted, replaced with Ennard, and then somehow living to continue searching for his father as a reanimated corpse. Despite all of the relative insanity that is FNAF lore, I could not find a way to make Michael the older brother due to not having any justification for his reanimation. _

_If, however, Michael is instead the Crying Child, then the promise of "I will put you back together" make sense along the storyline, as well as the picture of the bear (being that FNAF 4's cutscenes depict his death at the jaws of the bear), which allows him to be reanimated as a sort-of hybrid android. This would explain just about everything surrounding his existence, except for the obvious question of "what happens to the older brother, then?" _

_I will continue exploring both of these key topics in detail and hope to iron out my interpretation of the events in the series. Some other things I had to consider while writing this piece:  
\- The Atari 2600 was one of very few existing home consoles given the time in which this segment occurs; most games were housed at arcades, which makes FNAF 2 a child's/teen's playpen when it eventually opens  
\- Charlotte Emily's last name should reflect her father's, which I established in a previous section as 'Davis' to avoid the headache of an obscure last name  
\- While a delayed inclusion of Chica in the Core 4 is not necessarily canon, her later arrival to the stage is negligible and is used mostly for story-telling purposes  
\- The Japanese technology cited here by William would be comparable to 1G wireless, the first generation of cellular signaling. Japan was the first nation to develop a mass-media infrastructure for the technology (though not the only country to be doing so at the time) in the year 1977, which conveniently pairs with the date of this segment. The United States, where this story takes place, wouldn't receive anything similar until closer to 1983  
\- Induction-based power systems are the basis for most electric motors, the difference being that the motors usually have a coiled "squirrel cage" or rough equivalent that oscillates positive and negative charges to induce rotation through the drive shaft (I'm not an expert at this, but I have a basic understanding). Unrolling the cage and laying it in strips on the floor, then covering the floor with a sheet of something like stick-tile or linoleum (which parallels the FNAF 1 location's flooring) could arguably provide induction-based "wireless" power to the animatronics, which resolves one of the biggest questions of how any of FNAF's free-roaming is remotely possible  
\- Most animatronics around the world operate by a combination of electrical motors, pneumatics (air-powered cylinders and valves), hydraulics (liquid-powered cylinders and valves), and computer circuitry. Hydraulics are extremely durable and can be tuned to be ridiculously precise, but they would be far too heavy for a robot to maintain itself properly; as evidence, Funtime Foxy is canonically 290 pounds while Funtime Freddy and Ballora are both near 350. This is a relatively LIGHT-WEIGHT machine, considering the character has to maintain balance and be child-friendly in the meanwhile. Pneumatics seem like an obvious choice due to their relative lack of weight compared to their liquid brethren, but pneumatics make a great deal of noise and require constant air supply and monitoring, something not feasible in self-contained systems designed to fit within the confines of a slightly-larger-than-human-sized shell. Electric motors can be tuned well and are heavier than pneumatics, but they form a happy medium between the two and can receive most of their power through induction, provided the current is strong enough to continue powering the machine at all times. Unfortunately, I have to suspend realism beyond this point: currently, we do not have fluid robotic movement in a self-contained human-sized apparatus that maintains a relatively light-weight profile and can operate for extended periods of time independent of recharging, so while the animatronics of this segment (and, indeed, the entire franchise) are physically impossible given the technology of the time, I am suspending that bit of 'realism' for the sake of the story, as most people who enjoy these games have also done  
_

_I think that about does it for me on this one. Catch the next one soon, though it might change the rating to M. -Brale_


	4. Chapter 4

_**Warning: strong scenes ahead. Skip to the line break if you are squeamish.**_

* * *

**Afton **

**Chapter 4 **

**1980**

"Henry, William. I wanted to call you and propose an idea I just had. Yeah, about the business...ah, I might've had a glass or two, not important. Listen, would you be willing to work with me on some new designs? I'm thinking...yeah, yeah, expanding Freddy's. Ah huh. Yeah, a new style a bit, but I need your help with the details...yes, yeah. Right. Ah, well, I'm thinking humanoid robots this time. Yeah, ah, well, give them rosy cheeks and big smiles, right? Yeah, yeah, like that. A circus, maybe? I want the main attraction to be a clown. Yeah. Yeah, alright. Sorry for waking you. Alright. 'bye."

**1981**

"Daddy, why won't you let me play with her?"

William sighed. "Because today isn't your birthday, and we're only here to watch over the restaurant, Elizabeth."

"But she's so pretty and shiny!"

"I know, little one, but-"

"Didn't you make her just for me?"

William paused, unsure what to say. Only James had ever commented on the robots being unreal or machines. Perhaps he would have to have a conversation with the boy at home later. "Stay here with me, Elizabeth."

She huffed, flopping down into a chair beside her father. They remained near the entrance to the new establishment, its brilliant marquee advertising the opening of Circus Baby's Pizza World. Near the entrance, a small round figure with the appearance of a beach ball giggled and inflated balloons with his hands, greeting the children with a "hi" or "hello" and passing out every balloon he could. Further into the room spun a ballerina, her voice a comfort to the children learning to dance under her tutelage. Her body gleamed under the bright fluorescent lights, highlighting a shiny, plastic exterior. And of course, at the head of the room, past the bussers toting pizzas and sodas to the party tables, stood the massive seven-foot-tall star of the show, Circus Baby herself, singing and dancing and telling the children stories about the circus as she inflated balloon animals to match her tales. The party had been booked for months, a grand opening celebration, and it felt like half the city had turned out to visit. William congratulated himself as he greeted another family; branching out from Freddy's had been a brilliant idea, and ultimately netted more profit for the company.

He and Henry had made a variety of stylistic and structural changes for the robots, this time opting for sleeved braids of stainless steel cables to function as a reinforced structure within the pliant plastic shell of the figures. This allowed for the bots to exhibit a more complicated range of motion than the Freddy's animatronics, but the change had required that Circus Baby, Henry's original prototype, be created far larger than any prior animatronic they'd ever made to fully encapsulate their design choices.

"Daddy, I have to go potty," Elizabeth said. William glanced down at her.

"Alright, my dear, but straight to the restroom and straight back."

She bolted, fast enough that William feared she may have been near an accident. He would have to check in with her later about it; for the moment, more guests needed greeting and seating.

In fact, it was almost an hour later that the flow finally simmered down enough that he could begin to gather his senses, and it was only at that moment that he realized his daughter had never returned from the restroom. He looked around as best he could from his position near the door, abandoning the podium to take an inquisitive look at the rest of his establishment. Circus Baby's curtains were drawn, the patrons were eating cake and ice cream, the party appeared to be a success; even Ballora, the ballerina, and the little Balloon Boy were mingling with the guests and helping the adults to keep the children occupied. Where was his daughter?

He almost missed the rustle of the curtain near the Circus Baby display, and the uncomfortable tug in his gut told him his daughter may have disobeyed his instruction. He eased his way to the curtain, smiling and waving, ever the gracious host, until he found the seam in the cloth that let him through.

Behind the curtain, he saw his daughter, standing in front of the massive animatronic clown, its blue eyes fixed on the little blonde girl at its feet. From within its torso, a hydraulic arm tipped with a claw loomed over the young girl, lowering a single ice cream cone with two scoops of freshly-crafted vanilla ice cream atop. She reached for the cone.

"Elizabeth."

Her hands jolted; she whipped her head around, seeing her father standing by the curtain, a look of disappointment on his face.

"I told you straight to the restroom and straight back, young lady."

"But daddy, she's so pretty and shiny. And look, she even makes ice cream!"

Elizabeth grasped the cone and tugged. It didn't come loose, so she tugged again. This time, the cone and its sugary contents came loose, resting in her hands, the claw snapping shut with an uncomfortable noise. She giggled and took a bite, spinning back around to face her father.

"See, daddy? She's-"

William watched and heard as the claw snapped back open, reached back for the ice cream, struck the back of his daughter's head, and, before she could pitch forward or react to the force, snapped shut once more.

Directly through her head.

The uncomfortable noise of the claw's metal tines striking against each other inside her skull was nothing compared to the crack of bone exploding under the force nor the squelch and pop of her brain slushing under the impact. The ice cream cone fell to the ground, splattering into the puddle of blood that had begun to gather beneath the girl's feet. William watched the robot shiver, twitch, and heard it click; watched the light leave his daughter's eyes as her legs, her body, fell limp; watched as the claw and its arm whipped her body back into the cavity within the animatronic, the torso closing back into place with more sounds of bones crunching and organs popping under the pressure.

William staggered backward, stepping out from the curtained area and back into the dining room. He lurched, his feet carrying him with a raggedy gait into the kitchen, where he found himself vomiting into the sink, heaving up what little food he'd eaten for lunch that day. One of the chefs patted him on the back, saying something off in the distance that he couldn't hear. He had a massive headache, spit dribbled from his lips, and he felt his knees beginning to fail.

"Go...out there, and t-tell everyone there's been a gas leak. Don't go near the Circus Baby. Y-you all may leave as soon as the guests have cleared the building; I will p-pay you for your whole shift."

He heaved again, feeling rather than hearing the kitchen staff split responsibilities between shutting down the cookers and clearing the guests from the area. He rinsed his face, spitting the vulgar bile from his mouth, and wiped his face on his sleeve, reaching for the phone that hung over one of the counters. He spun the dial, ticking the numbers to Fredbear's.

"H-Henry...my daughter, she...c-come to the new place. S-something's happened..."

He didn't bother hanging up the phone, leaving his business partner alarmed and confused. William instead staggered out of the kitchen and back into the restaurant.

"B-Ballora, return to your place. Balloon Boy, return to...to your place."

Both animatronics complied. The last of the guests filtered through the doors, the head chef locking the glass-paned entryway behind them.

"That's everyone, sir. Anything else I can do for you?"

"No, that's...just go home."

"Are you sure? You don't seem-"

"Just _GO_."

His voice echoed throughout the building; employees scurried like mice to leave through the alternate exits at his behest. His knees finally gave out and he crawled toward the curtains, forcing them open as best he could from the floor. He made his next move to climb the side of the Circus Baby animatronic and used it to regain his footing, digging his hands into the segmented plates along its body. He flicked the main power switch at the base of its skull and shut the bot off, then began tugging at the paneling. Despite being made of plastic, the panels were not as soft as he had hoped, and they refused to budge.

Jingling at the front door gave him pause, and an out-of-breath Henry stumbled into the building, locking the door before approaching his friend. "William, you sounded like something was..."

He had caught sight of the blood.

"...wrong."

"H-how do we open it?"

Henry breathed in, releasing the breath with a shaky sigh. "Let me help you-"

"Don't!"

Henry paused.

"Just stay there and tell me how to open this damned thing."

"William, let me help you-"

_"YOUR FUCKING ROBOT MURDERED MY FUCKING DAUGHTER, DAVIS! YOU STAY RIGHT THE FUCK WHERE YOU ARE AND TELL ME HOW TO OPEN THIS FUCKING MONSTER!"_

Henry lowered his hand, staying outside the puddle of blood on the floor. He gave instruction in a low, quivering voice, and after a handful of painstaking minutes, the front doors of the torso cavity unlocked and swung outward.

The inside of the suit was a grisly mess. Blood, shredded clothing, chunks of skin, and other unidentifiable pieces of human body were scattered throughout the inner cavity. William could make out the sight of his daughter's hair, a matted, bloody mess, suspended near the top of the cavity by the remnants of her crushed skull, still pierced by the claw. Much of her body was missing or unrecognizable; the coils of stainless steel cable had her remnants thoroughly dismembered from her corpse.

William wrenched the claw open, his daughter's husk dropping to the floor of the cavity with a wet plop. He reached in, scooped up her body, and held the crushed head, its beautiful golden hair dyed a violent shade of red, carefully in his arms while he sobbed.

* * *

_**A/N: **__The TL;DR version of this chapter: Elizabeth gets crushed by Circus Baby at the grand opening of Circus Baby's Pizza World. I put a "trigger warning" at the top of the chapter to appease the more sensitive among us, though I will say I've written far worse than this before._

_According to Baby's line from Sister Location, if the player violates the Hand Unit's instructions on night three or four, Baby describes that she was onstage once, but "only for one day." As we see in the death minigame, this is why. _

_I would have positioned the entire section within 1980, but the timeline doesn't quite work out compared to what I've established previously. Designing, prototyping, testing, testing, testing, redesigning, reprototyping, retesting, retesting, retesting...the loop can be endless in creating a viable product for a market. I've had some experience with this "process" in developing a chain splatter guard for a motorcycle, and it took six months to properly test and adjust the prototype to its final form; I wouldn't even want to imagine conceiving and programming an entire robot._

_Canonically, I believe the Sister Location animatronics are metallic, hence their sheen during the game. However, in knowing what is arguably considered "safe" for children, having metal suits over metal skeletons is entirely, blatantly unsafe without proper sleeving, bumpers, or precautions; look at how many people die in car crashes despite all of the "safety measures" auto manufacturers have to put into their cars because we drivers are too stupid and arrogant to learn how to operate a two-ton bullet. As such, I will take some more of that "creative liberty" and make the suits plastic, painted to look metallic: this gives pliability (that is, can be soft enough not to crush a child's fingers) and plausibility (because it can be painted to have the in-game appearance of metal). _

_Funtime Freddy and the Bonnie Handpuppet were left out of this chapter, as were Funtime Foxy and Funtime Chica. If one of my thoughts about the story is correct - that is, if my hypothesis holds up - they do not exist yet in the timeline for reasons which I cannot disclose as of yet. Another four to six segments should identify why that is so, if my timeline of events is to be believed._

_Some have hypothesized that Ballora is the incarnation of William's wife. I haven't seen any reason to deny this, other than it not having been confirmed as canon by animdude himself. I would also point out that Henry's wife is never mentioned in the story; much like with the Foxy Brother, some characters are omitted or disappear from the story after a certain period of time._

_Circus Baby is canonically created by Henry according to the FNAF World update, although to call that game anything more than "loosely canon" at best is giving it more credit than is due, I think. Circus Baby's creation was also paired with Henry's suicide (something mirrored in the books), but this cannot be true for the continuity of the story if Henry is alive to close FNAF 6. If memory serves, this was around the time the books were gaining traction in development, so it is entirely possible that the Henry of the FNAF World continuity differs from that of the main story OR that he never actually committed suicide, both of which allow for this story's continuity to exist. While this is classified as a continuity error, it is not the major one with which I continue to grapple, and as such I am arguing that animdude "retconned" the story at this point to make sense._

_Anyways, that's my time. This is the chapter that has moved this story to the M rating, and this chapter is something like what is to come with the rest of this gruesome story. Back soon. -Brale_


	5. Chapter 5

**_Warning: sensitive content ahead. Proceed with caution._**

* * *

**Afton **

**Chapter 5 **

**1982**

October, a rainy month on the whole.

William found himself at the bar once again, another whiskey in hand, the fourth of the evening. In the year and several months since his daughter's death, William had become a shell of himself. He knew Henry had nothing to do with the robot's malfunction, knew that it was nobody's fault that she had died, but that tiny, broken body he'd held demanded repentance for its life lost. He tossed back the whiskey, tapping the counter for another, to which the bartender catered. She'd be getting a handsome tip from him, as she frequently had in the past year he'd been going there. She'd watched him go from a damaged-but-engaged man to a withered, haunted fractal of festering grief. She'd heard that he'd lost his daughter, to illness he'd said, but he had been neglect to say much else.

_It's not Henry's fault. It's not Henry's fault. It's not Henry's fault._

He took a deep breath, held it, and released it slowly.

_It's not Henry's fault. It's not Henry's fault. It's not Henry's fault._

He swallowed the fifth whiskey, slapping his tab and a large tip onto the counter as he slid off the barstool and shuffled to the parking lot.

_It's not Henry's fault. It's not Henry's fault. It's not Henry's fault._

He stepped into his car, then, without much thought, stepped back out in the parking lot of Fredbear's, a large gift box in his hands.

_It's not Henry's fault. It's not Henry's fault. It's not Henry's fault._

He stepped into the restaurant, setting the gift box atop a much larger gift box near the door, watching as the children laughed and played, their colored bracelets glittering under the lights.

_It's not Henry's fault. It's not Henry's fault. It's not Henry's fault._

He stopped to talk to Charlie, told her he had something for her outside in his car, and she giggled at her uncle William. "You left my present in your car?"

_It's not Henry's fault. It's not Henry's fault. It's not Henry's fault._

He opened his car door, sliding a well-wrapped package from the backseat and into her hands, a box full of newly-licensed merchandise not available in stores. She laughed despite the rain and gave her uncle a hug.

_It's not Henry's fault. It's not Henry's fault. It's not Henry's fault._

The door was locked, leaving her to get wet in the rain. William approached her, told her he knew another way in; the box inside thumped rapidly, rocking the heavy gift box atop its lid.

_It's not Henry's fault. It's not Henry's fault. It's not Henry's fault._

They went around the side of the building, out of sight of the floodlights. "Where are we going, uncle Will?"

_It's not Henry's fault._

"Oh, don't you worry, Charlie. You'll be going right where you belong."

_Not anymore._

The iconic tune of Pop! Goes the Weasel began playing from within the box, starting slow, then accelerating to a frantic pace. Children gathered around the box, watching as the lid vibrated from within, the tune playing faster and faster and faster and faster The lid flipped open, knocking the heavy gift box onto the floor behind the plastic shell; it broke open littering the floor with rocks and dirt. From within, one of Henry's most daring creations slid forth, a large, black, skeletal creature adorned with white stripes on its arms and legs, buttons on its chest, and a white mask with a vertical split in the center of its face. It leaned out over the children, towering over even the tallest of adults, gazing at each of their wrist-bands. Blue, yellow, pink, purple, red, orange, yellow, red, red, blue, yellow, purple.

Its eyes flashed green. Its head snapped toward the door. Without any warning, it crawled out of the box, skittering on the floor like a massive spider, its body banging the door open to disappear into the rain.

The door clanged shut. The Fredbear animatronic clapped twice.

"Pop! Goes the Weasel!" he cried, as he had been programmed. The children cheered and went back to playing.

William stepped back into his car, utterly soaked. His hands ached. His mind was fuzzy. His body thrummed with energy and fear, both at what he'd done and what would happen. He watched, panting, as the front door of the restaurant popped open, a large, black, sinewy figure crawling outside into the rain. The door closed, and it flicked glittering green eyes across the parking lot. William shivered.

The thing crawled along the far side of the building, away from the parking lot lights, over to where he'd been outside his car. He waited a moment, but it never returned.  
Suddenly realizing his blood pounding in his ears, he started the car, sliding out of the parking lot on slick tires and heading for the road, needing more than anything to get back home to his child. Children. His boys.

As he turned down the road toward his house, he ran into something. Over it. Bumped under the tire. He stopped, putting the car in park, and stepped out. Behind the front wheel of his car, bloodied and dead, was the squashed body of a local dog.

He popped his trunk, tossing the dead dog in; it landed amidst the incomplete endoskeleton of his next project with Afton Robotics and Henry. He paused, gazing at the dog, still panting, then slammed the trunk shut. He drove home, finding his eldest watching television. Some stupid show involving a vampire.

"Leave him alone tonight. He's had a rough day," James said. William ignored him, knocking at Michael's door. No answer.

He banged and cursed several times before charging around the house toward his youngest son's room, only to discover the window screen in the mud and the window cracked open. He stared, stunned that his child would be so disobedient.

"He'll be sorry when he gets back," he said. In his pocket, he wrapped his hand around the incomplete disc-shaped binaural resonator. "It's his fault for leaving."

_It's not Henry's fault._

_Not anymore._

* * *

_**A/N:**__ TL;DR, Charlie is murdered outside Fredbear's. I didn't write the murder because we only witness it in the form of a shoddy Atari-style minigame in FNAF 2, and the Puppet's game in FNAF 6 shows the aftermath, so I split the difference and wrote around it. _

_I debated how William would have committed this crime. Revenge had to be a key motivator (for me, at least), and the murder itself was fairly innocuous. I toyed with the idea of pedophilia, but that doesn't quite mesh with the rest of the story, so I left it alone. _

_This segment highlights what I will continue to argue was the first event in the series (aside from Elizabeth's death), and it's this event that has given me the biggest continuity issue in the story, one which I cannot reasonably write myself away from because it pits two key events against each other in the same location. So, here we go._

_According to FNAF 2 and FNAF 6, Charlie was murdered outside Fredbear's and becomes the Puppet. Both stories are congruent with this logic. We also see that the Puppet, then, has her own minigame: "Give Gifts, Give Life," in which she suits five dead children into the Core 4 and Golden Freddy. So far, so good. This also explains why the Withered animatronics walk around during FNAF 2 and the Save Them minigame._

_According to the UCN voicelines, Chica "was the first" and "has seen everything," which would suggest that the original Missing Children's Incident, noted on the walls in FNAF 1, happened before everything else. This isn't necessarily a problem; Suzie, who fills Chica's body, can come "first" and still be created by the Puppet._

_Where this breaks down, however, is twofold: First, the Puppet is ONLY SHOWN TO EXIST in one location: the FNAF 2 location. Not Fredbear's. Hence the gift box not being at Fredbear's during FNAF 4; recall that Nightmare Balloon Boy is canon (from Sister Location), while Nightmarionnette and Nightmare Mangle are not, which isn't possible if the FNAF 2 location is already open. Second, the FNAF 6 Midnight Motorist minigame's "Later That Night" sequence suggests that Afton murders Charlie, then attempts to visit the FNAF 2 location on the way home (for reasons unknown?) _

_This information creates a feedback loop: The Puppet cannot exist until FNAF 2, but the Withered animatronics cannot become possessed until the Puppet Gives Life and, according to the phone calls from FNAF 2, they must be Given Life before being retrofitted and becoming Withered. It's the chicken-and-egg question._

_The other continuity issue is with Charlie's location: it wouldn't make sense for her to be murdered outside the FNAF 2 location, William leave, then return "Later That Night" just to be turned away at the door. By that point, according to the FNAF 2 minigames, five more dead children are being investigated, and the "building is on lockdown."_

_SO, to make a headache not so painful, I've decided to reconstruct events my own way: Charlie is murdered outside Fredbear's and the "Later That Night" event happens after the FNAF 2 location opens later in the story. This allows her to become the Puppet, meaning the Give Gifts Give Life minigame is correct, and paves the way for future events to come._

_This one issue, of Puppet versus MCI, has plagued me even up until writing this segment, and I'm still not happy that the story cannot be easily retconned without overriding some of what animdude has created. I have attempted to keep as much information as accurate as possible, but something has to give at this point for the story to move forward, and I believe this is the easiest way for that to happen._

_I was originally going to have him drinking a popular English spirit, but settled on whiskey to drown his sorrows because eh, why not? It's not that important to the story. In case it's unclear in the rapid Polaroid-style cuts I've employed, he drove from the bar to Fredbear's and remembered none of it. Anyways, I think that's my time. Back soon. -Brale_


	6. Chapter 6

_**Longest segment so far. Graphic content at the very end.**_

* * *

**Afton **

**Chapter 6 **

**1983**

_Five days until the party_

William could see his son curled up on the floor in his bedroom, shaking and sobbing. The boy's incontinence had gotten worse. His older brother had done as asked, locking him in the bedroom. For safety, William had said. And it was. He couldn't risk having his son murdered by a lifeless automaton the same way Elizabeth had been.

He sighed, keying a code into the pad. The cameras switched back to the views of their old house: the hall, the bedroom, the closet. All he wanted was to keep his son safe. The discs were doing their jobs, helping Michael to understand why anything related to Freddy Fazbear and all its robots was considered bad.

And yet, the boy kept his plush dolls.

William switched off the monitors. He'd been in the shop far too long. He switched the lights off, casting one final glance around the space before closing the door and crossing the room to the elevator he'd had installed. He called the lift, casting a half-glance backward over his shoulder.

"Watch out for him, will you Elizabeth?"

He stepped into the elevator's open doors, turning to face his underground workshop before the doors closed.

_Yes, daddy._

He tossed his head, imagining what his obedient little girl might say if she could still respond. He thought how crazy it might seem to others, imagining the massive robot at the end of the hall to be his daughter. He'd watched her die. Held her limp, crushed body. Burned it, had the ashes stored in an urn, and finally buried the urn behind the new house.

The old one held far too many painful memories of his missing child to endure.

He stepped through the doors, locking them behind him as he stepped into the living room. He could hear his younger son's quiet sniffling from the other room. William sighed, moved to the kitchen, and poured himself a glass of whiskey.

"Tomorrow is another day."

_Four days until the party_

"I want to help you with designing the new models, Henry."

"Well, the robotics are manufactured by your company, right?"

William chuckled. "Perhaps so, old friend, but I thought it might be a fitting challenge to try to come up with the next generation of technology for Freddy's crew."

Henry sighed. "It's a constant battle against obsolescence. Any time I might come up with something new, it could be old news a week later at the rate this computer stuff is going."

"All the more reason to continue innovating at the forefront of the cutting edge, right? Put your name on the patents first so that other companies will have to feed from your hand to make a profit."

"Yes...I suppose that's fair."

The man sat down heavily in his chair. The past year had aged him a great deal; his hair and stubble had gone grey, and the loss of his only daughter had lined his face with stress more than had the calendar. "I just hope we're still doing this for the right reason, William. It should always be about the children, even as a business. I went out on a limb creating things like the Security Puppet and...Circus Baby...I just want to be sure we haven't lost sight of what's most important."

Both animatronics had been points of contention between them in the past, both for having failed to perform their jobs, and Henry had since been missing his prior creative spark. The expansion of the business had proven successful in that other Freddy Fazbear's Pizzerias had popped up across the country, all paying homage and royalties back to Fazbear Entertainment, which gave both men peace of mind in their earnings. Nevertheless, both were concerned about further expansion of the brand and franchise, which could only happen if they continued to innovate, as William had suggested.

"Well, then, let's see if we can't make this next generation more child-friendly than the current set. Perhaps shorter, more energetic? Maybe better disguised joints and more aesthetically-pleasing materials?"

"Perhaps..."

William sighed. "I know it's been hard, Henry. We've both been hurt by the events of the past couple years. I'd like to believe that Elizabeth would prefer her father to keep pushing forward, to remember her fondly and make her passing an opportunity to give other children the joy she was denied."

Henry looked up from his desk, an unclear expression on his face. "I am...sure Charlie would echo that sentiment."

"We should both be getting home soon. The hour draws late."

"I have some paperwork to finish up around here. Payment for our technicians is in order, and I need to start scripting what our training tapes should say."

"I'll have James record them once you're ready. He's in need of some form of work and has offered to do something involving the business."

Henry offered a single nod. "I'll consult you on that in the future, then."

William stood and left the office, a single wave accompanying his exit. He headed home, stopping by the market to gather a few items for dinner. When he finally entered his home thirty minutes later, he found Michael shivering in a ball on the floor in front of the television. James was in the kitchen dicing vegetables for dinner.

"What happened with Michael today?"

James shrugged. "Must be another one of his nightmares."

William sighed, unloading his groceries onto the counter.

Tomorrow is another day.

_Three days until the party_

William was once again down in the shop, this time with a new idea for advanced animatronic mobility picking at his brain. He had been attempting to craft together a complicated rotor-driven ball-socket joint based on his vision, but even with some clear sketches, reference notes, and measurements, the pieces weren't quite aligning the way he'd hoped.

The phone rang.

He picked up, still scratching his head over the drawings. "Afton."

"William, it's me."

"Henry. Aren't you on-shift right now, teaching those new hires how to work the suits?"

"Well, I was, until I found your son here."

"Oh, did James go without telling me first?"

"Not James. Michael."

William was silent. He set the pieces down on the table.

"Michael?"

"As soon as he saw me, he ran away, but he stumbled and fell into a ball on the floor, crying. He seemed terrified of Fredbear."

"You said he ran away from you?"

"While I was using the Fredbear suit, yes. I had to get out of the suit and calm him down. He seemed better after seeing Fredbear back on the stage, but he's still here and still very upset."

William sighed. "I would guess James took him there, though I don't know why. Michael hates Fredbear's."

"I wouldn't know, old friend. I'll keep an eye on him."

"I'll be there soon. Give me a few minutes to finish what I'm doing."

"Take as much time as you need."

They hung up their respective lines. "Sounds like the discs are working. I'll have to find out why James took him to Fredbear's."

William shook his head, aware of how crazy he seemed for talking to himself. He put his tools away and gazed around the shop. His eyes landed on Circus Baby, standing motionless against the far wall.

On a whim, he approached the animatronic. He stared at it, noting the detail to which Henry had gone to make the clown look humanoid. Uncannily so. Even its green eyes glimmered in the semi-dark.

"It's a shame such a well-crafted piece of machinery still had its flaws."

He stared a moment longer, wondering why something seemed amiss, before heading back to the elevator to bring his son home.

Tomorrow is another day.

_Two days until the party_

William had been at his desk in the shop, sifting through paperwork, most of which came in the form of orders for animatronics at franchisee locations and potential ideas for animatronics at a new location. Their next location, he hoped, would open smack in the center of the city, where customers would be plentiful.

He finished stacking his orders, tallying up the numbers of each robot he'd have to build, and gathered his sketches to deposit on the drafting table near one of his work benches. He sat down at the table, looking over its edge toward Circus Baby, her hulking form ominous in the shadow of the shop's dim lighting.

"I hate what you did to my daughter, but I'm remiss to have you scrapped. Maybe with a bit of tweaking you could come back for children's birthday parties or special events.  
The robot's blue eyes were motionless, shiny in the dim light but without a spark to drive them. William sighed, leaning back in his chair, dropping his palms over his tired eyes. "We need to expand...the merchandise is doing well, but the animatronics could do with a facelift..."

Images of several products based on the pizzerias drifted across his vision. A ball-jointed Bonnie doll with bright, rosy cheeks lingered a bit, and William contemplated the product.

He dropped his hands, mulling over the idea. His eyes refocused on the shadowy animatronic, its green eyes still fixed at an indeterminate spot. He blinked, all thoughts ceasing.

With cautious movements, he regained his feet, stepping around the desk and toward the robot. His footfalls were quiet, his breaths shallow, his hands shaky. He stopped, no more than ten feet from the animatronic, staring at its face. "Did Henry program color-changing eyes? Nevermind; why is this thing active at all?"

A noise echoed in the shop; the step he'd moved to take hung in the air. The robot's face shifted downward, its movement near-silent even in the stillness of the air. It stopped, face pointed directly at William.

"What-"

Green eyes lit up, their focus locking directly onto him. His jaw dropped; it blinked, its facial seams spreading a bit to widen its smile.

"Hi daddy."

He fell to his knees, staring at the looming, pig-tailed animatronic that had just spoken as though to him.

"C-Circus Baby?"

Its head tossed back and forth, eyes closing in the process. William faltered.

"E...Elizabeth?"

She nodded. "Yes, daddy. It is me."

"How...how...how..."

"Shhhh." Her eyes darkened. "Tomorrow is another day."

_One day until the party_

William spent the entire day analyzing the animatronic, removing and replacing pieces, cleaning the braided endoskeleton cables, poking around at the circuits, anything he could conceive to understand how the animatronic had somehow become fused to his daughter. Nothing yielded results.

"I don't understand. There shouldn't be any way for this to be possible. How, how can this be?"

The entire robot had been cleaned throughout, its innards completely bleached and void of biomatter. Still, green eyes monitored his movements.

"None of this is making any sense."

He sat back in his chair, sleeves rolled to his elbows. Tools lay scattered about the room; his once-organized desk had become a disheveled array of scattered papers. He gazed at the animatronic; it blinked at him.

"How is this even remotely possible?"

"I'm not sure," it replied in its own voice. "I know that she is in here, with me. She has become me."

"But how? None of her remains inside of you."

"I'm still here," the voice of his daughter echoed through the room. William felt a pinch in his chest; her voice had been silent for more months than he cared to recount.

"I believe you, Elizabeth, but I don't understand how."

"Neither do we," the animatronic's voice resumed. "All we know is that we are here."

Her head twisted to the left, focusing away from William. "Where is Michael?"

William looked toward the monitors. His son was nowhere to be seen.

"I should be back later. I will go find him."

Within the hour, William found his son locked inside the added back room at Fredbear's, just as James had said the boy would be. William sighed, his gaze heavy with pity.

Tomorrow is another day.

_Zero days until the party_

Michael and James had gone back to Fredbear's to celebrate the boy's birthday, leaving William to brood in his shop once again, still attempting to understand the animatronic's newfound consciousness.

"You are upset."

"No, I'm not upset. I'm frustrated."

"You seem upset."

"Not with you. I just can't seem to understand what caused this, how this came to be."

"Neither can we."

"Which is precisely why I'm frustrated. No amount of tinkering or thinking seems to get me anywhere with this."

He held his head in his hands, elbows supported by the table with the security monitors. He hated that he was becoming accustomed to the pose.

"Where is he?"

"At Fredbear's. It's his birthday, you know."

"I know. You should be there with him."

"The boy has become terrified of me because I try to keep him safe. He has nightmares. He hates Freddy Fazbear, and he's mortified by Fredbear."

"Why does he still go there?"

"It reminds him of you."

William finally sat up, looking at the animatronic standing behind him. It appeared to be gazing at the monitors.

"He is being bullied."

William looked. Sure enough, what appeared to be four teenagers wearing mascot masks were taunting the boy, throwing cake and pizza around the room and causing a ruckus.

"I'll be back later. I need to put a stop to the ruckus."

And so he left, making the brief journey across town to the pizzeria. Upon opening the door, he froze.

The bullies had halted with the food throwing, some of it having gotten on the animatronics' faces, and were circled around Michael's sobbing form in the middle of the room.

"Wow, your brother is kind of a baby, isn't he?" said the one with the Bonnie mask.

"It's hilarious," the Foxy mask said. The four guffawed.

"Why don't we help him get a closer look! He will love it!"

The boy whimpered something in response, but was hoisted from the floor by the boys, each holding a limb. The boy went from sobbing to panicking.

"Come on guys, let's give this little man a lift. He wants to get up close and personal!"

They hefted him higher, swinging his body back and forth like a hammock while mockingly chanting the lyrics to Happy Birthday. Like a chaotic spiral of colors, the group of five edged closer to the stage, spinning and jeering at the boy in their center.

"NO! I DON'T WANNA GO!"

The four stopped spinning, all staring at the boy through their masks. William told his body to move, to shout, to do something, anything at all, but his feet remained still at the threshold of the restaurant.

"You heard the little man! He wants to get even closer!"

The teens laughed and cheered, swinging the boy to and fro as they rushed the stage. The one with the Foxy mask collided back-first with the elevated platform, halting the group.

"Hey guys, I think the little man said he wants to give Fredbear a big kiss!"

William felt his heart drop into his knees. "On THREE!"

They lifted the boy into the air.

"One..."

They swung the child backward and forward, as though preparing to toss him into a pool.

"Two..."

They took aim, pointing the boy's head directly at the open jowls of the singing animatronic bear.

"Three!"

They shoved him in head-first, cackling like loons. If the spring-loaded locks are jostled around too much, they may fail and release the animatronic parts into the suit once again.

The boy scrambled and flailed, trying to pull himself out of the plastic and steel jaws of the animatronic of his nightmares. Water and heat are the two worst things for metal and electronics to experience.

William finally had the feeling return to his body enough to take a single step forward.

_"STOP!"_

The chilling noise of bone splintering and flesh popping brought the entire restaurant to a grinding halt. The boy's body went limp, his head wedged deep within the jaws of the robot. Both animatronics fell still, reverting to their default stances due to the interruption of their normal programming. From within the bear's mouth, blood and cranial matter dripped thick and heavy onto the plush carpet and wooden stage below, ruining the finish on the wood and staining the carpets a deep crimson. The teens had all stopped laughing. Everyone had.

The bear's jaw went limp, as per its default programming. The boy fell from its jaws, his mutilated head looking less like a human and more like a crushed Hallowe'en mask, the innards an unintelligible mess both in the robot's mouth and on the floor below. Then the screaming started.

The restaurant emptied and deflated, all except for the lone teenager with the Foxy mask, now in his hands. William's shivering gaze found the teen's and recognized the face as that of his son James, tears running down the young man's cheeks.

"Dad..."

William found his feet amidst the hollowness of his body and made slow, deliberate steps across the room toward the stage. James still stood, surrounded by his brother's blood, eyes streaming.

"Dad-"

William decked James; the teen bit his lip and felt his head crack against the wall as he crashed into it. No more noise dared he make, for although the room was spinning from the impact, his father was far scarier than any potential concussion, and the pain in his skull was nothing to that in his chest.

William knelt on the floor and scooped his youngest's lifeless body from the floor, his brain reminding him that he'd been in this very position not long ago at a different location. "Get out."

James needed no second urging and crashed into several chairs on the way out the front door, his legs not fast enough to escape the weight of his actions. William, his son in his hands, gazed up at the bear.

The restaurant closed down, its animatronics moved to the nearby Freddy Fazbear's location and cleaned of the human detritus splattered by the bite. Both suits were deactivated; the endoskeleton of the bear was completely removed for examination. Michael had been placed in a hospital in hope of possibly being revived, but as the experts all agreed, nothing could save the boy's head from that much damage. Within a week, his organs gradually shut down, all until the last few remained in a state of semi-functionality.

"Can you hear me?" James asked.

"I don't know if you can hear me."

"...I'm sorry."

Within the hour of James's only visitation, Michael's heart stopped beating, and he was pronounced dead. William took his son's body home and into the workshop, laying it on the table beside the endoskeleton from Fredbear. Circus Baby stood over the work table, staring down at the broken body and the endoskeleton, seeing, as William could, the inner row of teeth that had crushed the top of the skull; more punctures, from the animatronic's head, had left more shattered bone and punctures across the crushed remains of the boy's head.

William watched as Circus Baby raised one of its hands, holding it open over the boy's chest. From within the body, a faint light glowed. The animatronic slid its hand upward, and the light seemed to follow, exiting the boy's gaping trachea to become fully realized in the dim light of the shop.

A glowing white ball of energy coalesced in front of William's nose. He stared in horror and fascination.

"I will put you back together," Circus Baby said. With a slow, deliberate movement of her hand, the ball descended into the animatronic skeleton's skull, the light dissipating into the metal casing. The room regained its original dim lighting.

The endoskeleton's eyes slid open, their traditional purple irises a vibrant blue, just as Michael's had been.

* * *

_**A/N: **__This segment took much longer than the previous five to assemble, mostly because I had to cross-reference the in-game events with what could have been happening with William and Henry in the meanwhile. There are a handful of continuity missteps in the games, and there are some questions in developing this segment I've had to answer._

_Wot I Think, for the purposes of this story:  
__\- FNAF 4, Night 3: the shadows of Fredbear and Spring Bonnie are shown on the wall of the diner, yet Crying Child is chased by a man in a Fredbear costume. I recognize that Freddy's isn't exactly Disneyland, where two of the same character may never exist in the same park at the same time, but why would Fazbear Entertainment have both a springlock suit being used by a staff and a second (perceived) springlock suit as an animatronic, both of the same character and at the same location? Shouldn't that be unnecessary?  
\- There are two houses shown in FNAF 4 and confirmed by Sister Location: the Crying Child's house, which is the two-story house in the clearing (the Afton house, if you will) and the Nightmare house, the house in which FNAF 4's nightly gameplay takes place. If we are to assume that we play as the Crying Child, which seems to be canonically agreed upon in the community, why would he wake up in one house but have nightmares in another? This seems to be a continuity error of some sort that I can't readily figure out (and FNAF 6's Midnight Motorist makes this worse by introducing a third floorplan into the mix), which has led me to the following conclusion: the Crying Child's house is the same as the house in FNAF 6 (the layout was simplified for the context of the Midnight Motorist game) and the Nightmare house is some former place of living, prior to 1983. This allows William to have security installed in both houses to keep track of his son after his daughter's untimely death, so that the same fate doesn't befall two of his children. Unfortunately, as we saw in this segment and in FNAF 4, that's not ultimately how things play out  
\- The comment in FNAF 4, Night 3 of "Remember what you saw" is a bit odd, and the two prevailing theories are that it either refers to the Crying Child having seen his father or Henry helping a fellow employee into one of the springlock suits in the back room, which is feasible, or it refers to the Missing Children's Incident, which I am arguing that, at least for the sake of this story, cannot have happened prior to Michael's death: why would William kill five random children (friends of Michael's) with no probable cause? William has to realize that Baby is possessed by Elizabeth first, which he does, but that introduces a second problem: how, then, would he have murdered "Cassidy" and stuffed her into the Fredbear suit, yet the suit still be functional to then murder Michael by mistake? And if we argue instead that Cassidy is the Crying Child and Michael is the Foxy bully/older brother, then that introduces a problem with names: "Cassidy" has been predominantly preferred as a girl's name of Gaelic origin meaning "clever" or "curly-headed," which, while fine and good, is a unique name for a male at best; its popularity may have been somewhat strong prior to 1991, but typically as a surname or a female's name. Furthermore, names aside, why would Michael be "the one you should not have killed"? Revenge for the nightmares? Revenge against his father's atrocities? While both feasible, we never see any evidence that the boy resents his father; if anything, he would resent his brother for the murder  
\- The FNAF 6 poster displayed when Lefty is on-screen during one of the load sequences depicts a bear, clown, dummy, and Afton. I argue that Michael is fused to the bear's skeleton (hence the slumped figure stuffed by the Puppet in "Give Gifts Give Life") to show his connection to Fredbear despite not actually being one of the "trapped" spirits. I also argue that Michael fusing to the endoskeleton is the reason he stays alive after being scooped in Sister Location: nowhere in the franchise has it been shown that the SCUP can remove a Remnant from organic matter and then replace that Remnant back within the same organic matter. The only possible way, according to lore, that Michael could simultaneously be the Foxy bully AND survive the SCUP in Sister Location is if he were an android created by William, which, while it would solve a host of problems and would redirect the Crying Child/"Cassidy's" rage to William for having created them in the first place, has never been shown, nor accounts for how the android of Michael would have lived a relatively normal life until killing his younger "brother"  
_

_I know, the wall of text above is confusing and messy; suffice it to say, the wall of text addresses the issue of Crying Child being Michael or Cassidy and I've settled on Michael as a reanimated meat-suit android to avoid the confusion of having to do so to the older brother. Technically-speaking, Cassidy as Crying Child reborn as Michael with Remnant is feasible, as is Cassidy as Crying Child and Michael as Older Brother, but I have other plans for Cassidy's character; her description in the novels and the Survival Logbook doesn't match the sprites of the Crying Child. _

_I'm certain I've overlooked things. It's tough trying to keep this all organized, including the tiny details, in a franchise as convoluted as this. Yell at me about things I missed; it'll be a minute or two before I have enough time to write the next segment. -Brale_


	7. Chapter 7

**Afton **

**Chapter 7 **

**1984**

_29 June 1984 _

_Kids vanish at local pizzeria - bodies not found._

Two local children were reportedly lured into a back room during the late hours of operation at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza on the night of June 26th. While video surveillance identified the man responsible and led to his capture the following morning, the children themselves were never found and are presumed dead.

Police think that the suspect dressed as a company mascot to earn the children's trust.

_6 July 1984_

_Five children now reported missing. Suspect convicted._

Five children are now linked to the incident at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, where a man dressed as a cartoon mascot lured them into a back room.

While the suspect has been charged, the bodies themselves were never found.

Freddy Fazbear's Pizza has been fighting an uphill battle ever since to convince families to return to the pizzeria.

"It's a tragedy."

_13 July 1984_

_Local pizzeria threatened with shutdown over sanitation._

Local pizzeria, Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, has been threatened again with shutdown by the health department over reports of foul odor coming from the much-loved animal mascots.

Police were contacted when parents reportedly noticed what appeared to be blood and mucus around the eyes and mouths of the mascots. One parent likened them to "reanimated carcasses."

_16 November 1984_

_Local pizzeria said to close by year's end._

After a long struggle to stay in business after the tragedy that took place there many months ago, Freddy Fazbear's Pizza has announced that it will close by year's end.  
Despite a months-long search for a buyer, companies seem unwilling to be associated with the pizzeria.

"These characters will live on. In the hearts of kids, these characters will live on" - William Afton, CEO of Afton Robotics

* * *

William leaned back in his chair, gazing up at the ceiling in his living room. He'd begun preparing for the winter holiday season, his sons both eagerly awaiting the end of December to finally open their presents. A tree stood in a corner, bedecked with lights and ornaments; elsewhere, garlands and wreaths hung on walls and over doorways.

William sipped his whiskey, reminiscing.

Michael's reanimation had been a resounding success. The boy, now an android, had successfully inhabited his new skeleton, and his soul energy, which William had taken to calling "Remnant," kept the organic bits of his body free of rot; indeed, the boy's body grew as normal, requiring William to continually update the boy's endoskeleton on a monthly basis.

Elizabeth, Ballora, the clown-like animatronics that had gone with their restaurant, remained mostly dormant underground.

James had taken on a position as a performer/entertainer at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza and had been offered the job of recording job training tapes for future employees interested in doing the same. At least William's wife's prior marriage had resulted in some use for the boy.

Still, the feeling of Charlotte's neck snapping between his hands had given William an itch he'd been unable to scratch since. That is, until Fredbear's had closed down in the wake of Michael's "death." Moving Fredbear and Spring Bonnie to the Freddy Fazbear's Pizza location across town had been the exact move he'd needed: the suits were there, but since Fredbear's endoskeleton had been removed to use for his son, the suit was no longer wearable; the forearm sleeves merely fell off, the legs dropped to the floor, and the head hung limp, its jaw open. Instead, he'd left it in the back room, choosing to wear his own suit, the Spring Bonnie suit, as his lure.

And lure he did.

The first had been Suzie, a little blonde girl whose dog had been killed a couple years prior. In a moment of weakness, during which she'd been reminiscing about the dog, William lured her away, dressed as Spring Bonnie, and told her the dog was alive and well in the back room. The Spring Bonnie suit made the murder clean, as no forensic evidence could be tied to him given that his son and a few other employees had all been trained to wear the suit. Four other children had quickly followed: Gabriel, Fritz, Jeremy, and Cassidy. He'd left their broken bodies in the back room, his body alive and tingling with energy at the illicitness of the acts he'd just committed. He left, telling nobody of his crimes, and the police who were inevitably called to the scene targeted the staff member who should have been on-shift in the suit at the time, one of James's friends Richard. He'd been arrested on suspicion of murder and held for three days in jail while awaiting investigation and sentencing.

And yet, the bodies were never found. William, as the proprietor, had been required to visit the back room a number of times during the investigations, but the bodies of the children, which he'd left in the open, were nowhere to be seen.

It was only after a long day of questioning, as he was closing up the restaurant for the night, that he had his answer: the unmistakable chime of Pop! Goes the Weasel sounded from the large gift box stored in the employees-only room had played, and up rose the Marionette, its eyeless sockets trained on William. He'd left soon afterward, but confirmed in the next week that the bodies now occupied the animatronics, as their movements had changed, their programming had become more self-aware, and they all seemed to stare at any of the purple-clad employees with flat, robotic expressions.

Now, at the end of the eventful year, William had been forced to close the restaurant. Fazbear Entertainment had gotten large enough to be self-sustaining without the location, and its closure could only help better the company's reputation. He intended to keep the animatronics for development: he'd finally gotten the rotor-based ball-socket joints to work properly and wished to retrofit the current models for a grand reopening at a larger location closer to the heart of the city. William only wished his blood children were still genuinely alive to revel in the glory of all their father had created.

Instead, the man sipped his whiskey and thought back, enjoying his memories.

* * *

_**A/N: **__This is my imagining of the blowback from the Missing Children's Incident. It's not possible that William was the apprehended suspect (unless he was released later in the timeline to reopen Jr's) and I have plans for James, as this segment might suggest, so I condemned one of James's bully friends; regardless, whoever was convicted is of little importance to the story, as the convict is never really tied into the story in any way except at the first Freddy's location._

_I've had to change a few things with the newspapers because the story otherwise doesn't make sense: the Core 4 cannot be relocated to Jr's to be repurposed until AFTER the first location closes to allow them to do so, yet the final paper indicates a "years-long search for a buyer." A small issue, but one that otherwise isn't nicely resolved. It could technically remain open during the events at Jr's, but FNAF 2's Night 1 phonecall throws a wrench in that plan: Phone Guy specifically mentions an incomplete retrofit of the old animatronics due to "The smell...," which suggests that the Withered animatronics are the same as those from the original location, as that's the only time a "smell" is mentioned coming from the robots._

_Most of this segment is designed to move the plot forward, which means it's a bit dry and sparse in detail, unlike the previous long segment. The news clippings tell a better story on their own than I could have done in as many words, so I've opted to use them for continuity and chronology. At this point, William KNOWS about Remnant, which is vital because it sets up the rest of what happens in his "legacy" (which is essentially everything except the FNAF 4 game), as this story will hopefully continue to detail. Establishing why Fredbear no longer moves, why Spring Bonnie is at the Freddy's location, how the Give Gifts Give Life sequence takes place with the Core 4, and some of the comments later made in FNAF 2's phonecalls (Night 5 or 6, if memory serves) is all part of the plan, and it untangles several of the threads of this franchise that otherwise don't make any sense. Suzie is still first, as Chica confessed in UCN, but not "first" in the strict sense that she came before all else (otherwise Mangle couldn't exist)._

_I think that's my time. If I've forgotten anything, let me know. Back soon. -Brale_


	8. Chapter 8

**Afton**

**Chapter 8**

**1985**

William glanced at Henry. "What do you think?"

Henry sighed. "They look...scary."

The updated Freddy Fazbear animatronics being tested at their new location had been fitted with new skins, parts, and technology designed to capitalize on their free-roaming capacity and make them more child-friendly: better hardware and software resulted in a more advanced algorithm programmed into the bots' circuitry, but their physical appearance had become off-putting as a result. Eyes sunken into sockets, mouths that opened to expose the inner endoskeleton teeth, joints that, while soft and fuzzy, were matted from unsuccessful cleanings. Even the mild odor they'd maintained after a deep clean lingered, and the restaurant was nowhere near the popularity William had envisioned.

"The new machinery seems to be working, at least."

"But these are some of the scariest prototypes I've ever seen. These aren't fit to be a part of the Fazbear Entertainment brand anymore."

"And that's where I have you covered, old friend. I'd been waiting to surprise you with these, but they're ready to go, and your plans worked perfectly to set them into motion."

"Surprise me?"

William led the way to the Parts and Service room, accessing a door invisible to cameras and animatronics. Beyond, the office lit up with a pair of dim floor lamps, illuminating the fading color of the Spring Bonnie animatronic and a large tarpaulin sheet covering something bulky on the far side of the desk. William, with a flourish, tossed the tarp to the floor.

Gazing back at Henry with shiny, sparkling eyes sat four motionless animatronic figures, each made of shiny plastic and with bright rosy cheeks. They looked like toys, large inanimate ball-jointed action figure counterparts of the monstrosities on the stage in the main showroom, all except for Foxy, whose red had been replaced with white. "I didn't make these."

William laughed. "You designed them, old friend. I knew with the closure of the local Freddy's at the end of the year that we'd be needing something new to distance the company from the black smudges of the past, so I went looking through your designs and fabricated them myself. No charge to you; they're still prototypes, after all, but these characters do everything the others can, but better. And they're smaller."

"Are they safe?"

"As safe as any machine can be. No hard edges, nowhere for children to pinch their fingers."

"I mean, can they deter murderers?"

"Pardon?"

"I want extra security in them. I want to link them to a criminal database so that if someone tries to repeat the horrors of the past two establishments, we'll have a name, a face, and proof of what took place."

William blinked. "That is certainly possible. It will mean a small reconfiguration, but they should have more than enough space and processing capacity for that."

"Then that is my proposal. We do that, and we can begin testing these as the new face of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza."

Henry turned to leave, giving William a moment to think. It wasn't an unreasonable request, given that the police had been as useless as ever at apprehending the true culprit. And if William programmed them himself with what he'd learned watching Henry, how could they ever pose a danger to him?

He felt a light headache beginning to settle in, which he believed to be from the smell of the old bots. His left ear had an annoying ringing that he couldn't quash, so he darkened the office and headed to the security room, hoping to close down the building as soon as the last guests went home for the day.

_A Grand Re-opening it shall be._

* * *

_**A/N: **__Short segment, mostly used for setup. FNAF 2's phonecalls reflect the smell of the Withered animatronics and detail the Toy animatronics being linked to a criminal database, so those bits are included. Next segment will likely also have some setup, as it takes place in 1986 and the fun doesn't happen until 1987. _

_I think that's my time. Back soon. -Brale_


	9. Chapter 9

**Afton **

**Chapter 9 **

**1986 **

The headaches had gotten worse.

William tossed back another draught of whisky. Maybe the drinking was making the headaches worse?

He shook his head. James was out, doing day-work at Freddy's. Michael was at school. That left William mostly to his thoughts, down in his workshop. Henry had joined him on this day, however. They both sat on opposite sides of William's desk, plans for animatronics and a stack of orders for franchisee packages laid between them.

"The company is expanding nicely," William said. Henry offered a lone nod.

"The toy animatronics seem to have drawn a crowd. People are ordering them left, right, and center."

"They're not ready for production. We still have some bugs to work out."

Henry quirked an eyebrow. "Such as?"

"They're unstable. Their daytime mode isn't as fluid as I'd hoped. Your vision was to bring life to these animatronics, make them seem real to the children, and they still seem robotic, static in their movements and expressions."

Henry sighed. "We're only capable of getting so far with plastic and metal. We'd need to push toward synthetic materials: fabrics, rubber, soft-body plastics, gels. We'd also need pneumatics for smoother movements; motors are good, but they aren't fluid throughout when observed carefully."

"Upgraded processors would help with managing motor calculations."

"Perhaps, but the number of calculations per second required to create fluid movement though servo-motors is high. We'd need one processor for each limb with current technology."

William held his head in his hands, leaning over the desk. "I also want to do rentals. The equipment down here could certainly see some life above-ground once again."

"You...want to bring back the circus series?"

"It's a waste to have them in storage down here. They've been collecting dust for so many years; we should be making a profit from them."

"But...after what happened..."

"That was then. This is now. The time is right to reintroduce the public to Circus Baby, Ballora, and their groups of miniatures. Balloon Boy has already found a home at Freddy's, after all."

Henry hummed. "It would take some work. You'd need somewhere to keep them when not commissioned for work."

"Right where they are. I'm proposing they have a facility built right around them."

"That...would require a lot of work."

"I have time. The business has money. It'll be contracted work, but that's fine."

Henry nodded. "Will you be tying it back to Freddy's in any way?"

"I've thought about taking what we've learned with the Toy series and adapting it to a Funtime series. Make them all more consistent: multiple face plates for wider expressions, body plates for easier maintenance and maneuverability, better electronics across the board, and a more immersive character development AI."

"That can all be managed. You still have contacts with Intel, correct?"

William nodded. "I'm sure they'll be eager for the opportunity to take up another engineering challenge."

"Then we can begin the designing. What do you intend to tell the customers interested in the Toy series?"

"I'll explain that they're prototypes and that we're working on an updated version for consumer release in the future."

"Do you intend for the Funtime series to be the commercial version?"

"Perhaps. I'll have more decided about that once we get closer to a release."

Henry nodded. "You may wish to lighten up on the drinks, old friend. They can't be good for you."

William chuckled, tossing back the remainder of his whisky. "I'm quite fine, thank you. One or two drinks never hurt anyone."

The raised eyebrow on Henry's face begged to differ, but the man remained silent. "I'll see myself out. The Pizzeria could do with a checkup."

With that, Henry strode away, disappearing into the elevator toward the surface. William chuckled.

"Hear that, Elizabeth? Soon you'll be able to perform for children again. Your death will not have been in vain."

Her green eyes lit up from across the room. "Yes daddy. I'm excited to perform again."

He grinned. "And this time, you'll have more friends to perform with you. Of that, I will make absolutely certain."

* * *

_**A/N: **__Another short chapter. This one, as warned, is mostly filler. This sets up the Toy animatronics, why Balloon Boy is found at the FNAF 2 location, when the ideas for the Funtime idea were conceived (but not carried out), and how the Circus Baby's Entertainment and Rentals facility got its origins. Some of what I would like to say must wait a bit for other events to pan out, but I at least can justify a handful of continuity choices. Things get much easier to work with now that we have the tricky "pre-FNAF 2 stuff" worked out._

_\- Balloon Boy is considered "canon" in FNAF 4, but not Nightmare Mangle or Nightmarionette. At this point, I think I've shown how this is feasible, but in the event I haven't: Crying Child has to know of Balloon Boy in order to have canon nightmares, but the Puppet and Mangle cannot be actual "characters" for which he feels any terror/has seen; after all, our brains can only generate dream characters and settings with which we have some form of familiarity (dream faces/people are entirely sourced from faces/people we see in daily life, even if we don't actively recall when/where we saw them)  
\- CBER has to be an underground facility beneath Afton's house for the context of this story because of its in-game maps that give us its physical location and ties to the surface's FNAF 4 house(s), but there isn't necessarily anything saying when the facility was constructed. I'm of the thought that it starts as a basement, but I think the books take that in a different direction (one which I'd have to reread in order to rethink construction time). _

_The next segment is already written and will likely go up shortly after this one. I think that's my time. Back shortly. -Brale_


	10. Chapter 10

**Afton **

**Chapter 10 **

**1987 **

October 16, 1987

_Police were contacted yesterday to visit a local restaurant named "Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria" due to the disappearance of five young children, all between ages four and seven. The missing persons report, filed by the parents and guardians of the five children, failed to explain where or how the children had gotten to, and all adult parties claimed they lacked any knowledge of the whereabouts of their young. _

_Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria is a restaurant designed specifically for the entertainment of its patrons, and with singing and dancing animatronics, pirate adventures, and more pizza than Mama Jan's, it's all about the kids. Often the choice for a birthday party or a celebration, Freddy's sees crowds of children and their parents seven days a week, from the time their doors open at noon till they close each night at ten. _

_It's with much surprise that the local community faces such a tragedy. The incident has left a sour taste in the mouths of its residents, and it is with due tension that the community awaits a verdict as to the fate of the missing._

* * *

October 18, 1987

_The ongoing investigation at Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria for the missing children has yet to reach a compulsive conclusion, and police and management alike have been reluctant to release any information about the case._

_"We can't say anything for certain," Sergeant Jamie LaRouj had to say. "The investigation is proving to be difficult because nothing on the security cameras was amiss, and there weren't any suspicious characters witnessed in the audience."_

_The facility, which features state-of-the-art animatronic technology, is known for its appeal to children through pizza, songs, games, and interactive "animal-tronic" characters. Star of the show Freddy Fazbear himself had this to say:_

_"Entertaining these children is the reason I was built," he says. "Management has asked me to keep my eyes and ears open to new information."_

_Fazbear, a robotic bear comprised of metal and electronics, is a prototype activities unit developed exclusively by Afton Robotics, Inc. When asked how the bear could offer a statement, the pizzeria's management had a ready answer. "A.R.I. had an idea for a walking, talking robot that could learn and adapt to its surroundings, one that would be safe for all ages, sizes, and shapes of people in any setting. Freddy is the prototype, and his friends are the improvements to the design."_

_However, while the state-of-the-art animal-tronics might be aiding police efforts with the investigation, answers are still few and far between for the five distraught families._

* * *

October 23, 1987

_The missing persons report at Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria has yet to be closed, and the parents of the five missing children have simultaneously filed individual lawsuits against the restaurant's management, demanding answers and justice for their missing children._

_"It's been a week and we've heard nothing. No news, no information, nothing to tell us where our children have gone," one distraught mother comments. "I believe they know more than they're disclosing to the public, and I demand to have answers."_

_Restaurant management declined to comment. Sergeant Jamie LaRouj has extended her sincerest apologies to the families for the lack of pertinent information, and asks that they offer no hindrance to the ongoing investigation. The parents of the missing children failed to reply to the apology._

* * *

November 13, 1987

_Just three weeks after the disappearance of five children, Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria has once again become a scene of a crime, and the culprit isn't human._

_The family-friendly restaurant boasts a handful of animatronic animals to entertain guests, and one of these very robots, a fox dubbed "Foxy" by the management, has caused a thriving party to become the scene of a violent crime by taking a bite out of the head of the day guard in attendance yesterday evening._

_The victim, one Jeremy Fitzgerald, was attempting to persuade a five-year-old girl to leave the restaurant after a birthday party for her friend had concluded. She allegedly resisted leaving, and eventually took to hiding behind a curtained area of the restaurant known as "Pirate's Cove." Fitzgerald, still attempting to convince her to leave the restaurant, drew back the curtains hiding the room from view, and was attacked by the animatronic, a large portion of his forehead and brain torn from his body by powerful steel jaws. The scene then turned to chaos._

_Paramedics recovered the still-alive Fitzgerald and immediately placed him in a medically-induced coma to transport his body to a nearby medical facility. His wife has commented that a large portion of the frontal lobe has been removed from his brain, and that doctors say he will likely not remember who he and his family are if he recovers at all. The surgery was called a success, though the victim is still comatose at the facility._

_The animatronic fox, a six-foot-tall steel and electronic suit lined with cross-braces and fitted over a human-sized endoskeleton, has since been removed from use at the restaurant, though the damage to the company's reputation is already done, and the fate of Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria is presently unknown._

* * *

November 16, 1987

_After a two-day investigation, Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria has announced its closure. Such an assertion comes as little surprise to the community, as the police uncovered a very gruesome surprise at the restaurant._

_Just over three weeks ago, a handful of missing persons reports were filed with the police regarding the unknown whereabouts of five children, all of whom had been last seen at Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria at the time of the disappearance. Three days ago, one of the animatronic members of the pizzeria's entertainment took a bite of an unfortunate victim's skull, taking part of his brain as well. Now, both mysteries can be put to a definite conclusion, one which the management has neglected to shed light upon._

_Police discovered a foul odor coming from the animatronic maintenance room just over eighteen hours ago, and upon examining the contents of the room, no immediate clues came to light: several replacement masks and body parts for the robots, as well as a few back-up endoskeletons to support the pieces, were found in the room, but the smell held no explanation. Then, just one short hour later, a detective examined what he believed was an oil stain on one of the spare torsos for one of the robots, only to discover that it was dried blood. A quick look inside the torso unit revealed the crushed body of a child, roughly between the ages of five and six. The body, believed to be one of the missing children, was soon joined by four others, all wedged or stuffed into various portions of the newer animatronics' bodies scattered around the room. _

_The violent scene left police unnerved, and after detaining management they searched maintenance records for the robots. Afton Robotics, Inc. was then brought under scrutiny, as autopsies performed by doctors have concluded that no human force could have mutilated the bodies as badly as they were, and the animatronics were then believed to be the cause. Such unorthodox news was subject to skepticism, but upon close examination of some damaged parts stashed in a corner of the room, the investigation was closed. _

_Nobody is certain why or how the robots forced the five children into the suits, but Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria has taken full responsibility for the incidents and has agreed to cease doing business in its current form for the foreseeable future, using the restaurant's entire net worth to pay compensation and legal fees to the families of the deceased and victimized. _

_Afton Robotics, Inc. has yet to respond to accusations of negligence and third-degree murder issued by the families, and it is unclear just how much blame they will serve to hold._

* * *

Henry slammed the door to the office of the closed building, an action which failed to cause William to flinch.

"We're finished, old friend! All plans for the future, all ideas, all of the hopes and dreams for the animatronics and the brand are done!"

William drained his third glass of the day. "Ah, calm down, will you? Nothing's ever permanent."

Henry went from angry to enraged. "Nothing's ever permanent? Your children and mine have been victimized by this damned endeavor of ours, and now so have ten other children to boot! _That sounds pretty fucking permanent, William!_"

William stood, knocking the swivel chair awry. He shoved Henry from across the desk, knocking his partner into the wall beside the door.

"Don't you _EVER_ insinuate that I have forgotten about the suffering of our children. I have to wake up every day to face a house empty of all of my biological children; the only thing there is that useless lump of a step-son who murdered my boy!"

"You still have a child, William," Henry replied quietly. "At least you still have one."

William paused, releasing a large breath of air. Henry was right; at least William still had a son in his house, even if not his by blood. Henry had lost everything.

"I'm done, old friend."

William looked back up at Henry, who had pushed himself off the wall and was staring at the floor.

"What?"

"I said I'm done. Afton Robotics, Fazbear Entertainment, it's all yours. I don't want any part in this endeavor any longer."

"But you started all of this ten years ago!"

"And look what we have! More dead children than years of entertainment to match! I can't think of any other business venture that has had this much tragedy in as much time."

He sighed.

"This is all too much, William. I can't...I can't keep this going. I'm done. I'm stepping away from everything. I'll..."

He sighed again, this time just exiting the room. William watched, a tumult of emotions mixing in his gut. He poured another glass, hands shaky.

After a calming sip and swallow, he shivered. "Then so be it. I know enough, I have enough. We'll wait for the dust to settle, and then we'll reopen. Pay off the families, reopen the old location, use the old suits. And the Toy series..."

He pushed the door open, staring out at the show stage. He gazed at the plastic animatronics, slumped on the stage in their inactive states. "The Mangle may be a take-apart-and-rebuild attraction, but I think it's high time all of them were taken apart and rebuilt. I've got the perfect idea for them."

He downed his glass.

"Just as long as I don't die before I figure it out. I need to know what made it possible for Elizabeth and Michael. Because now, it's my turn."

* * *

**_A/N: _**_And so we have 1987, complete with the bite. I'm sticking with the whole "Jeremy was bitten" shtick because that's the easiest story for me to tell and seems to fit nicest with the lore at large, insofar as I can find (though I could be WAY wrong)._

_Things to consider:  
\- Stylistically, it makes sense (to me) that the Funtime series be constructed from the remnants (double entendre absolutely intended) of the Toy series of animatronics. According to the Happiest Day minigame, the five children of the original Freddy's (the original MCI children) are set free by the Puppet. Afton is shown breaking the original animatronics apart in the original location during the FNAF 3 cutscenes, the end of which depict his confinement in the Spring Bonnie suit (which we've yet to see). However, while those spirits are laid to rest according to the minigames, there are still spirits lingering. It is ARGUABLE that the spirits released are those who were trapped in the Toy animatronics, which is certainly feasible, but the Foxy mask in the game is red after the spirits leave, and the lights in the characters' eyes are shown for the Core 4 animatronics, not the Toys. As a result, I argue that the five children from the FNAF 2 MCI become the Funtime animatronics (hence Ennard in Sister Location) and the condemnation of William to Springtrap as his tomb is the key to set them free  
\- Henry is described in the FNAF 2 phonecalls as being an enigma, someone who Fazbear Entertainment cannot seem to contact as the original owner of Fredbear's Family Diner. While I could reshape the prior three sections to reflect this and still have no continuity issues, I will suggest that Fazbear Entertainment is merely engaging in a bit of subtlety to keep Henry "invisible" to others outside of the company. While there isn't anything to suggest this as being true, I'm taking more of that "creative liberty" here for stylistic development  
\- We never actually see the bite happen, so I've not written a description of it in this story; as with every other incident of death, I will gloss the ones that are glossed in the games and detail the ones that are detailed. Thus, no "content warning" at the head of this chapter, as while someone is injured (killed?) there is no description of the incident itself  
\- I originally wrote these newspaper clippings a while ago as a concept for what the general public would know of the FNAF 2 location's notoriety, but as it turns out not much about the location and its key event have changed in the interim, so all I've done is change a handful of details and rework one potential plot snag, and that's that (By "a while ago," I mean "three years ago")  
\- William having a drinking problem is a character quirk. There isn't anything in the lore suggesting this, but I felt it might add a bit of a human aspect to him. Either that or I find stupid quirks like that to be interesting  
_

_From here, the story is pretty much what we already know/assume to be true, so the act of writing things gets easier. HOWEVER, Matpat's recent theory about Henry being the Orange Guy from Midnight Motorist throws a massive monkey wrench into the story I've been writing, namely because it undoes about three-quarters of this story's content if it's true, and thinking about the implications of this has given me another headache to work through. Maybe someday I'll write something more fanciful that explores the story of Freddy's without focusing so much on the lore. We'll see._

_Anyways, I think that's my time. Sorry for the long wait, but hopefully the double-whammy makes up for it. Back soon. -Brale_


	11. Chapter 11

Afton

Chapter 11

1988

William gazed at the vat, the air warm and thick with the heat of the fire. He looked back up at the limp form of Toy Freddy, strung up on a hook hanging from the ceiling. His plastic exoskeleton had been removed, as had the electronics and glass from his eyes; only the various metals of his body remained, most of which were aircraft-grade aluminium. William glanced at the tech standing beside him, unsure what the wait was.

"You're certain you want to do this?"

William nodded. "Melt them down, then we'll extrude what we want."

With the press of a large orange button, the crane lowered the endoskeleton into the vat, stopping with the limp figure in a sitting position. Within a matter of seconds, the aluminium began to boil and bubble, hissing as the figure began melting down. William tried to ignore the sound, but the hissing almost sounded like screeching.

The animatronic endoskeleton gradually melted into an aluminium soup. The crane retracted and slid further along the track, allowing the next hook with Toy Bonnie to swing over the pit. Once again, the crane lowered, and the angry hissing of molten aluminium echoed through the warehouse. The same was repeated with Toy Chica, Mangle, and Balloon Boy in quick succession, scrapping their innards down into a bubbling silver soup.

"Alright, now for the extrusion. All I need is a flexible braided cable."

"Stranding extrusion, got it. All of it?"

"Of course."

"We'll have to add some curing and molding agents to the mix to make the cable properly."

"Fine, fine."

Several steel buckets were filled on the floor and poured into the vat, mixing into the hissing sludge as it simmered on the heat. The vat was then tilted to one side, allowing the soup to pour into a massive trough. The soup continued to bubble, cooling in the trough under the watchful eyes of its makers. William nodded.

"The extrusion process will likely take a few days. The metal has to cool and be rolled to blend imperfections, then it will be extruded through the mold."

"That's fine. You have my number for when it's done."

The tech nodded. "See you again, Mr. Afton."

William left the building, descending the catwalk via a staircase at the far side of the building, well away from the hazardous equipment below. He returned home a short while later, noting that Michael and James were both out for the evening, likely spending time with their friends or working. He drained two glasses of whisky, then sat down to watch some television.

At five, he rose from bed and began preparing for his day. He rolled up to the pizzeria shortly after six, unlocking the door to let himself in. The party room smelled of iron. He sighed.

"Another long night, kids?"

The animatronic heads all swiveled toward him; even Foxy's snout protruded from Pirate's Cove.

"Seems like you've had fun. Now I have to clean up your mess again."

He found the body in the back room, crammed into a spare Freddy Fazbear animatronic suit. He undid the shell, releasing the body from its plastic and steel prison, noting that this guard had been particularly unlucky: the endoskeleton had seemed to fuse into his body rather than piercing it as normal. With the usual slicing and prying, he managed to pull the endoskeleton from its flesh prison, leaving the limp, scarred body to bleed out on the floor. He gathered the body and dragged it to the kitchen, skinning and grinding the meat into a mass, then grinding and pulping the bone to fill another curing pan. He mixed the meat with some purchased beef and pork, then began filling pre-cured bone sleeves to make tubes of human pepperoni, to be smoked in the back and then relocated to the fridge for consumption on pizzas.

What he couldn't salvage was placed in the smoker and used to start a fire; the smell of ashes and bacon wafted from the remains of skin and hair that were serving as makeshift charcoal. William hung three of the fresh pepperoni tubes in the smoker, then closed the door. His chefs would remove them around noon and move them to the fridge afterward. He then turned to spicing and prepping more beef and pork sausage, to be stored in a pan in the meat fridge for the next morning. He then went to the supply closet and gathered bleach and industrial degreaser, mixing the volatile solution with a modicum of water to create a sanitation solution, then began wiping the counters in the kitchen and mopping the floor from the kitchen, through the tiled party room, to the maintenance room. The mop bucket's water turned pink, but the solution would denature the blood enough that it would be almost unrecognizable as such.

He pulled an aerosol can from his belt and sprayed a foaming disinfectant on the endoskeleton and the inside of the suit's shells; the solution, his own design, would destroy the cells and devour the remaining plasma to create a chemical soup that would evaporate and leave no trace of human remains in its wake.

He made sure to wipe down the security office and the hallways, leaving no trace of the night's chaos. Most guards made it through the third night, but rarely did they survive the fourth, and this one was no exception.

They were disallowed from continuing their night roaming at six every morning. He'd trained them with high-voltage shocks if they so much as moved the wrong way outside the hours of midnight and six. This directed all of their pent-up rage at the nightly guards, and William had more to worry about than indiscriminate killing of broke college kids who he could tell the media had been terminated due to no-call-no-show one evening if they ever came asking. They'd stopped asking weeks ago when no trace of the bodies could be found, nor any indication of foul play. He'd had to get better at covering his tracks; last time something had gone awry, he'd had to close a pizzeria, after all.

He'd kept the suit. Hidden it in an out-of-bounds area. It was only to be used on the children, after all. And soon, with his new Funtime animatronics complete, he'd have little to worry about in the way of child experimentation.

Soon, he'd have it.

Soon, he'd be immortal.

He'd have enough remnant in his hands to keep himself alive.

Permanently.

* * *

_**A/N: **Again, it is my firm suspicion that the Toys were used as templates for the Funtime animatronics. This chapter establishes their creation as a mixed-up ball of chaos, melted together. The Core 4 can't be melted down (at least, not this early) because they have to remain functional through Mike's shift in 1992 from FNAF 1. William knows about what he's calling Remnant, and believes it will make him immortal. _

_This also is a romanticized version of the morning cleanup after guards fail to keep the animatronics at bay, and why they only attack between midnight and six. This also sets up the controlled shocks for Circus Baby's Entertainment and Rentals. As of this time, Phone Guy hasn't died in the office, but we'll see that happen, I think. I couldn't readily figure out how bodies could go missing and not be found later, and turning them into a cannibalistic pepperoni was the best solution I could fashion that would avoid most headaches. Bleach is good for denaturing many proteins, which is why it is typically used in concentrated application to blood spots or stains. _

_I think that's my time. Back soon. -Brale _


	12. Chapter 12

_**Mild violence ahead.**_

* * *

**Afton **

**Chapter 12 **

**1993**

William had not previously given Michael much thought when he'd mentioned working a new night shift job the previous week, nor had he bothered questioning the new night guard at Freddy's. His manager had taken care of the details, and his son hadn't exactly specified what the job was.

Then again, William had been busy lamenting his failures to harness remnant.

Had he not been so wrapped in his endeavors, he might have noticed James's distinct lack of appearance in the house over the past few weeks. He might have realized that his sons were both too close to Freddy's for comfort. He might have come to the conclusion that he'd need to put his foot down and revoke his sons' involvement in the restaurant.

But it wasn't until Michael confronted him Friday morning, right at six-thirty when he'd gotten home from his shift, that William finally focused enough to pay attention.

He'd been sipping his morning coffee and reading the paper, wrapped in a dark purple bathrobe at the kitchen's bar counter. The front door slammed open and shut, and the sound of inconsistent breathing met his ears, followed by unstable footsteps as Michael stumbled into the kitchen. William spared a glance for his son, then dropped his paper at the bloodshot eyes that met him over the counter.

"James is dead."

William blinked. "What?"

"Your other son is dead, _father_." An ugly sneer curled Michael's face.

"Oh, come off it. He's been putting in a lot of hours, sure, but-"

Michael whipped a small cassette-based recording device from his pocket, his thumb shaking as he pushed play. A brief burst of static issued from the speaker, followed by a tinny voice, one that had played the night prior over a phone speaker.

"...check inside those suits...in the back room?"

William felt his stomach lurch. That was definitely his stepson's voice. A loud, metallic thumping swelled from behind the tinny sound of his voice.

"I'm gonna try to hold out until someone...checks. Maybe it won't be so bad."

More banging.

"Uh, I-I-I-I always wondered what was in all those empty heads...back there..."

What sounded like a music box tune began playing, one which William recognized all too well: it was Freddy's lullaby theme, one which he'd helped Henry to install a decade ago. The infamous Toreador March tinkled through the phone; the voice sounded panicked, as though it was having a hard time swallowing.

"You know..."

Something resembling a sigh of air rasped through the speaker; the jingle continued playing in the background.

"Oh, no..."

A metallic roar flooded the speaker into static, and the tape ended. Michael glared at his father.

"Your son is dead. Murdered by those...those things."

William had no words. He knew his stepson had been recording for the company, training new hires to do their jobs properly, but he'd had no idea that the boy had moved on to becoming a night guard. And now, here was Michael, clad in a sweat-soaked purple dress shirt, eyes running with tears, following the exact same path.

"Why...why would he ever-"

"He knows you hated him."

The revelation was quiet, but William was silenced.

"He knows...knew...you despised him for existing, because your perfect ex-wife had cheated on you when you were so consumed with work. He knew that well enough to use it as a reason to try and be everything you believed he couldn't. He confessed to me, after I got out of the hospital, that he just wanted you to treat him the same way you treated me: like a goddamned human being, and not a soulless machine."

William stayed quiet, his eyes focused on the tape recorder. The irony of his son's words was not lost on him. He wondered for a moment if Michael knew.

"And now, in his quest to follow you, to earn your affection, he's dead. Killed by the very thing you created."

"And you're following him to the grave, is that it?"

Michael was jolted by the outburst, but retaliated. "Because you won't tell me anything! You may treat me like a human, but nothing in my life makes sense! Why do I lack friends? Why do I have spots of memory loss in my mind? What is happening to me?!"

"You need sleep."

"I need a fucking _father_, not a businessman who owns murderous robots!"

William glared, but Michael ignored it, moving to leave the room. The sound of his father's voice gave him pause at the doorway.

"When one year speaks to you above all others, you will find her, buried underground. You will find all of them, all of the memories of the past. You can put her back together, like I never could."

The interrupted departure had its intended effect. Michael turned, locking red eyes with his father's sunken face. William could feel the boiling rage from across the room, but resumed sipping his coffee, silence once again covering the house.

Still, despite the outward calm, the monsters had finally pushed the wrong buttons. He was a good father, damnit! He'd put his own children back together, and now they could be immortal! And soon, he would join them, if he could finally get the remnant to bind to his body. For two agonizing days, he tampered with the children his rental robots brought back to his shop, using lethal shocks and blinding lights to regulate the robots and surgical instruments to leech the remnant from the mangled corpses of the young. After repeated, agonizing failures, he finally snapped, unleashing an obscene flow of electricity into all of the animatronics still underground and returned to the surface, donning the purple button-up of the security guard's outfit. It was Saturday, a night not known for having a guard, and so when he entered the building alone the air was eerie and still.

He marched into the party room, aware that his watch read shortly before midnight. He glared at the bots.

"Fine then, you useless children. You want to play games with my family? You want to continue murdering my children? I've had it with you! It's time to finish what I started, and all of you are finished! Come find me, then! Let's play this fucking game."

He stole away to the out-of-bounds area in the back, a room that had formerly been used as a staff room and was beyond the animatronics' programming to recognize as traversable space. Instead, he'd stored a handful of tools and machines in the room: a grinding wheel, a hydraulic press, a band saw, and a toolbox laden with wrenches, ratchets, hammers, and drill bits. He grabbed a crowbar and waited, and once the telltale chime of midnight rang through the building, he heard heavy footsteps thump toward the bathrooms and as far as they could reach, though they stopped when outside the room. He'd left the door open to observe their behavior, and watched as the hulking form of Freddy turned and began to stomp away.

William rushed the bear, wedging the crowbar between the plastic head and torso, and flipped the plastic mask free. The tail of the crowbar shredded the power switch, mangling several important wires and flipping the headless body onto the floor. Several internal catches came loose from the force, unseating the plastic covers on the limbs and interrupting the normal movement of the joints. William swung the crowbar once again, severing the upper endoskeleton from the lower and ruining the machine, leaving a pile of plastic and a broken mangle of metal. He used the crowbar to wrestle the endoskeleton from the shells, gathering the fragmented body in his arms and dragging it back into the room. Without hesitation, he threw the pieces onto the platform of the hydraulic press, directly beneath the pressure arm.

Before he could engage the machine, another set of thumping steps stole his attention. Bonnie, purplish-blue and menacing as ever, loomed outside the room.

"Fine. You all wanted to live together? You can all die together, again."

He threw a sledge hammer at Bonnie, cracking the plastic torso and knocking the heavy bot askew. Much the same as with Freddy, William unseated the head and severed the torso and critical electronic wires, ruining the robot's autonomy. It, too, was dragged into the room and dumped beneath the arm of the press. Usually, the machine was used to crush cardboard, paper, and plastic down into cubes; tonight, it would finally crush the children who'd plagued his business night after night for a decade.

The approaching Chica received similar treatment, and not even Foxy's hook could stop the slaughter. William had managed to cram all four ruined endoskeletons into the crusher, and after closing the mesh gate, engaged the machine. With a whine, the arm began to lower, compressing the metal endoskeletons into a flat, useless plate of ruined remnant and shattered lives.

_Welcome back, William._

He spun around; the voice had been right in his ear, the voice of a young girl, but nothing was there.

_You're right where you belong._

He spun again; the machine had gone silent, as had the rest of the facility. He noted with startling clarity that everything had gone silent, leaving only his own breathing echoing in the darkness of the room.

_Revenge is sweet, isn't it?_

William spun again. There, blocking his exit, were four floating ghosts, four of the children he had killed in his rage over his son's death. He gaped.

_Especially when you get to deliver the blow yourself._

A fifth child, this one with long, black pigtails, floated as a wisp through the line of children, approaching William directly. He knew this one, had known her by name.  
He ran toward the far side of the room, and Cassidy followed. He felt nothing but terror, adrenaline pounding the blood through his veins. She reached out toward him, and he yelped, running back across the room. He tried to leave, but the wall of spirits mimicked Cassidy's reach. Beyond them, he could see salvation.

A bolt of silent lightning flashed, illuminating the ghosts. Each one suddenly took on a nightmarish appearance, resembling Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy in the light. Cassidy had morphed into a jagged, blood-stained version of Fredbear, the purple hat and golden fur glinting in the light, staggering toward him like a corpse. The lightning flashed again, and this time William could make out a sixth, behind the guards at the door.

Hovering, just beyond the threshold, was an ominous skeletal figure, so black it seemed to steal the dim light from the atmosphere. Its face, by contrast, had a faint glow to its edges, black stains running from its gaping eyes to its saw-toothed mouth. Long, dripping fingers reached back to spectral arms, its ribcage visible through the fabric as it grinned, gazing at him in what he could only guess as hunger.

_I am the fearful reflection of what you have created._

Its haunting, hollow growl echoed through the building, filling William with a sense of dread he'd not known himself to ever possess. Cassidy drew closer once again, and the lightning faded.

In the dying light, he saw his salvation.

Spring Bonnie.

The animatronic lay slumped at the far side of the room, its body in suit-mode, gaze empty. He dodged Cassidy and the others, scrambling to the suit, pulling the legs and torso onto his body before seating the head. He gazed down at the children, who had all ceased their movements.

"I've killed you once before in this suit, and I can surely get rid of you again!"

He cackled, leering with wild eyes at the five spirits in the room. Their faces, instead of showing fear, instead wore smiles.

As though a balloon had been popped, sound filled William's ears.

He heard the patter of the rain outside.

He felt the misty droplets leaking from the ceiling overhead.

He heard the suit's innards whine as he breathed, the rusted locks groaning at the strain.

He felt the breath leave his lips, eyes widening, as he realized too late.

_Let's find a suit that's right for you_, Cassidy's voice echoed in his head.

He heard the clasps fail before he felt anything, knew he was dead as soon as they unlatched. The endoskeleton they'd compressed out of the way immediately unloaded as the coiled springs failed, slamming the metal into his body from the back, the front, the top, and the bottom. He felt his skull cleave, felt his arms and legs rip apart, felt his gut pop as his spine was wrenched apart, replaced with a metal replica. He grunted in agony, shivering, trying to remain upright. He gazed at Cassidy, who maintained her smile.

_Be sure to come back soon_, she said. The head of the Puppet leaned into the room, beckoning the ghosts, and one by one they faded.

William fell to his knees, shaking, still trying to fight the pain, the relentless metal, the short-circuiting of his brain.

He'd forgotten to tell Michael how much

Elizabeth how

James

His ex-wife

just how much

he

loved

them

He collapsed backward against the wall, feeling the heat of his leaking blood cooling on his legs as it drained from his ruined body. He lost vision in his right eye, gazing at the crusher with his left.

Just as he had done to them

so they had thus done to him.

The trap had been sprung, and with a final shaky sigh he went limp.

* * *

_**A/N: **__As this entire story focuses on William's perspective, I had to detail the minigame from FNAF 3 to set up his transformation into Springtrap. I may have to shift perspectives next chapter for Michael's viewpoint because Sister Location happens without requiring William/Springtrap being present. Realistically, I have three, maybe four chapters left at this point._

_Some things to note:  
\- There is speculation as to when Michael would have visited Freddy's in the first FNAF game compared to when William would have broken down the robots in the FNAF 3 minigames. There is also speculation as to the resting places of the endoskeletons for the robots; some have suggested the Funtime series, others have suggested they were just destroyed. I've attempted to meld these things together by having Michael's revelation be the cause for his father's visit to the pizzeria. GRANTED, we don't see evidence of water damage during FNAF 1 the way we do in the FNAF 3 minigame, but that doesn't necessarily mean it didn't exist. I've also had William crush the robots to offer the chance of the Happiest Day minigame's "good ending." Some might wonder how, then, it is possible for the Phantom animatronics to exist in FNAF 3 outside of nightmares of our player character caused by hallucinations, and for this I turn to MatPat's suggestion that the spirits were incomplete at their release: remember, the Withered animatronics were used for parts. There was never anything to suggest that they were remade with all of their former endoskeletons in place, meaning that, in the case of this story, the Funtime animatronics may be an amalgam of ALL TEN CHILDREN. Just a thought.  
\- Using the Nightmare animatronics here was purely artistic liberty, as we see nothing of the sort in FNAF 3. However, that isn't to say it couldn't have happened. Additionally, the Puppet is shown as bringing the Core 4 online during...FNAF 2, was it? and so must have been at the pizzeria at one point; I will posit that, as the animatronic is corporeal (completely in-tact and visible) in FNAF 3 and onward, it could conceivably have been at the pizzeria at the time, as would be required to have the Happiest Day take place in the wake of William's self-destruction.  
\- Some of Cassidy's lines come from FNAF UCN, found by using the Death Coin on Golden Freddy; others are things the One You Should Not Have Killed could have conceivably said in the moment. Also, trying to describe Nightmarionnette's voice is challenging, because "growl" doesn't do it justice.  
_

_Anyways, I think that's my time. Back soon. -Brale_


	13. Chapter 13

Afton

Chapter 13

20XX

No amount of drink-induced headache had ever been this bad. Then again, no amount of drinking had ever replaced his brain and body with so much metal.

He had no idea how long he'd been buried in darkness. The oppressive black had long since driven him mad, and his only consolation was that it was peaceful. He longed to be free again. Those children had trapped him after he'd set them free. He felt his lust for blood rise as the black continued to smother him. More children needed to die before he'd feel satisfied.

_Father._

Something creaked. William attempted to look around, only to see nothing but ink.

_It's me, Michael._

He felt his joints crack and groan as he twisted to his left, then to his right. Only the block wall behind him gave him any sense of direction; all else was still and silent.

_I did it._

Michael? Done what?

_I found it._

Found...? Oh...Circus Baby.

_It was right where you said it would be._

William slumped back against the wall, listening to a voice that wasn't there.

_They were all there. They didn't recognize me at first, but then...they thought I was you._

Perhaps they'd killed Michael, and it was his voice from beyond?

_And I found her. I...put her back together, just like you asked me to. She's free now._

William's head listed to the left. At least one of his children would have a proper cross-over.

_But something is wrong with me._

William paused, eyes still lazing about the darkness.

_I should be dead. But I'm not._

The memories of his son's reconstruction surfaced; William wondered at how much his son knew.

_I've been living in shadows._

Something thumped across the room, heavy enough to rattle dust from the ceiling and onto William's plastic head.

_There is only one thing left for me to do now._

More thumps, louder, and suddenly rivulets of light leaked through the long-forgotten doorway across the room. William's eyes focused on the glint of the doorknob as it twisted.

_I'm going to come find you._

The door swung open and banged against the blocks on the far wall. William remained still, noting several large, shadowy figures entering the room. Flashlights pointed at his plastic body, highlighting the weathered cracks brought on by age and rot. One hooked his arm and hoisted him from the floor; the movement caused his brain to short-circuit, and he was once again plunged into darkness behind glass eyes.

* * *

"...surprise for you, and you're not gonna believe this! We found one. A real one."

Some muddled, yammering voice rang from a distant place as William came to. He found himself standing in a corridor, long and void of all but a smattering of Freddy Fazbear's memorabilia he'd helped design and patent. The designer had lacked any kind of taste or charm in decorating the building.

"Uh-uh-uh, gotta go man. Uh, we-well look, it-it's in there somewhere, I'm-I'm sure you'll see it. Okay, I"ll leave you with some of this great audio that I found. Talk to you later man!"

The tinny voice clicked off; William could feel a headache born of irritation forming. His eyes traced over a security camera above him and to the left. He stared, contemplating moving out of its view, when a second tinny voice echoed through the building. This one almost buckled his knees.

"Uh, hello? Hello hello?"

_James?_

"Uh welcome to your new career as a performer-slash-entertainer for Freddy Fazbear's Pizza."

There was no mistaking his son's voice over the shoddy speaker, but William remembered that to be impossible. James was dead, stuffed into one of the empty Freddy Fazbear shells in the maintenance room while working the night shift a few weeks ago. And yet, despite the illogical nature of things, William had to know if his son had miraculously survived. And so, while the pre-recorded voice prattled on, he shuffled with slow, deliberate steps toward the sound of the noise.

Arcade cabinets, linoleum floor, cheap spray-paint, old children's drawings, streamers, strobe lights, boxes of unused leftovers hindered his passage through the halls. One section had a puddle of water on the floor; William splashed right through it. He'd caught sight of himself in a mirror in the next room and paused.

Staring back at him through dead, grey glass eyes was a putrid animatronic that looked nothing like the suit he'd used to wear. Every bit of exposed plastic had wear marks and rot, the color had faded to a greenish hue, and odd bits of wires and pulsing tendrils of something organic stuck out of various joints. He gasped, and the machine's mouth popped open; the voice it made was his, but distorted, as though played back through a speaker. He looked down at his body, realizing for the first time that he was still in the suit that had snapped shut onto him, still trapped inside the spring-locks that had failed back at the restaurant. James's voice had faded to a dull ring in his ears, both of which stood upright and were creaking back and forth atop his head.

He had become one of them, one of the machines he'd helped create.

He flexed his fingers. At least his sense of touch was gone, as was almost every sense he'd previously possessed; no air, no heat, no cold, no floor, nothing but the vague feeling of his limbs moving at his behest to carry him toward the noise.

"Hello."

The voice of a child rang out through a hallway behind him, and William felt his head heat up. The suit immediately spun around, the man inside looking for the child who had spoken to him. He reentered the previous hallway and looked around, watching the camera and scouring the room for any sign of his next victim.

But no child could he find. He gave up and moved back into the other hall, passing what looked like a mangled Bonnie on a metal pipe and a Foxy head with one blinking eye.

Off to his left, the child's voice laughed, and the man ducked into the nearby vent, crawling as best his bulky body could do with only the sound to lead him. The voice led him further, and he crawled through the vent, past a sealed door.

When he reentered the hall to find the child, he discovered himself to be back where he had started, which confused him.

"Uh, hello hello! Uh, for today's lesson we will be continuing our training on proper suit handling technique."

William moved toward the sound of his son's voice, finding along the way that once again the infernal child's taunting greetings were leading him through vents, backwards down hallways, and ultimately back to where he'd began, more confused than ever about the circumstances surrounding his presence in the building.

"Uh, hello? Hello hello? Uh there's been a slight change of company policy concerning the use of the suits. Umm, don't. After learning of an unfortunate incident at the sister location involving multiple and simultaneous springlock failures, the company has deemed the suits temporarily unfit for employees."

That had to be Michael's death. It had to be. Right?

William searched, following the voice of his son and the calls of the child, knowing only that he had to continue onward in his goal to finding out what was going on.

"Hello, hello? Umm, this is just a reminder of company policy concerning the safe room."

Still he wandered, trudging ever closer to the deceptive voices that beckoned him.

"Management has also been made aware that the Spring Bonnie animatronic has been noticeably moved, and would like to remind employees that this costume is not safe to wear under any circumstances."

Wait.

William remembered making that notice public. He paused in one of the hallways, knowing without seeing that the camera was trained on his position. That had been back shortly after Michael's death in 1983. The last he'd known, he'd gone to Freddy's to put those children in their place in 1993. That meant that the tapes playing down the halls were more than ten years old. William looked around, noticing for the first time that the animatronic suit parts around him were all in various states of rot and decay. They hadn't looked that way when he'd released the children, nor had his suit been green.

_How long was I out?_

He found himself back at the entrance once more, this time on a mission to find out what was happening.

"...due to budget restrictions, the previously mentioned safe rooms are being sealed at most locations."

So he'd been trapped, eh?

"...will be here most of the day today constructing a false wall over the old door face."

Even if he'd managed to find the door in his haze, he could never have gone through it. That box had been his prison, every bit as much as his suit had.

Henry.

The only one who would've even thought to do anything like what the tapes were suggesting was his old business partner, the slimy devil who'd left the business so many years ago.

He'd murder whoever was in the building with him, then go after Henry. It was only fair, considering the swine had left him to rot.

The tape sounded as though it'd been cobbled together from various other voice recordings of James's; William guessed in his angry stupor that this particular message had been created long after his son's death just to save face. How Henry had gotten back into Fazbear Entertainment was something William had trouble understanding, but he felt he'd know better if he could rip the living human in the building to shreds and investigate for himself.

He made a right into a hallway and stared through a large, reinforced glass wall that focused directly into the office of the security guard. William fell stock-still, gaze locked in disbelief on his victim.

For standing at a makeshift control panel laden with various bits of memorabilia from the company was none other than the son of a bitch he'd once called his friend. Alive, well, and jabbing at various buttons around the desk, the sweating, now balding man was speaking aloud to a tape recorder on his desk.

"I-it's only now that I understand the depth of the depravity of this...creature - this monster that I unwillingly helped to create. As if what he had already done wasn't enough, he found a new way to desecrate, to humiliate, to destroy. As if the suffering wasn't enough, the loss of innocence, the loss of everything to so many people. Small souls trapped in prisons of my making now set to new purpose and used in ways I never thought imaginable. He lured them all back. Back to a familiar place. Back with familiar tricks. He brought them all together. Are they still...aware? I hope not. It keeps me awake at night. I could make myself...sleep. But not yet. Not until I undo what he has done and heal this wound - a wound first inflicted on me, but then one that I let bleed out to cause all of this. He set some kind of trap. I don't know what it was, but he lead them there again. He overpowered them again. And he robbed them of the only thing that they had. Again. I don't know how those tiny breaths of life came to inhabit those machines. But they will never find rest now. Not like this. I have to call them all back. All of them. Together in one place."

Flashes of the children he'd killed waged war in the forefront of his mind as he stared at the man in the room. Henry pushed a button on the recorder, stopping the tape, then gasped; he'd finally noticed the looming green rabbit in the hall. William made a move toward the office, but Henry was faster despite his age: the old man sparked a lighter and ignited a trail of gasoline, sending the building up in roaring flames. William backed away from the fire, watched as Henry fled with the recorder in hand, staggered away from the fire as it leapt toward him. William ran as fast as his rusted joints could carry him, away from the heat and the fire, away from the smoke, away from his end. Fire would unmake all remnant, of that he was certain, and he still had so much to do yet.

He hid, lurking just beyond the reach of the boiling flames, contained within an area of the building that had suffered recent water damage and was still damp enough to allay the flames. The building collapsed into a heap of charred rubble, and still he remained in a puddle of water, waiting for the ashes and smoke to clear.

Once the fire crews had put the building out, leaving a husk of charred wood and a thin smattering of former Freddy Fazbear's property, William sat up. He'd remained still, waiting for the crews to overlook him. He'd lost part of an arm in the fire, but that mattered little to him; he felt nothing and had the eternal life he'd sought.

He remembered Michael's promise, and returned it in kind.

"I'm going to come find you," he growled.

* * *

_**A/N: **__So this isn't the last chapter, as you may have guessed. Pizzeria Simulator still remains untouched yet, and UCN may have a cameo at the tail of that segment if I feel inclined. I've left the date vague due to artistic liberty, as the whole "2023" thing seems odd to me, even though we are told rather explicitly that FNAF 3 happens thirty years after FNAF 1._

_Things of note:  
\- The voice recordings from FNAF 3 were recorded sometime when Fredbear's was open and the original springlock suits were in use, but we're never given a clear time-frame on when. It is generally assumed that the death observed in FNAF 4 is the "multiple and simultaneous springlock failures," but there is also the possibility that the recordings just describe what happened to William in the FNAF 1 location and that the suit's movement is merely his Remnant attempting to move the body. Since this is left unclear, I've opted for the former per the community's general consensus. This may also be resolved if we assume that the springlocks had failed previously with William inside (if we go by the lore in the books, in which he is seen with a scarred body partway through the series) and that the fact they failed at all is enough to retire them  
\- The recording for Night 6 of FNAF 3 faces continuity issues if we are to assume that it takes place at the FNAF 1 location sometime in between the Bite and FNAF 1; James (in this case) cannot be killed in the Night 4 phone call if William has not yet become Springtrap, but William cannot become Springtrap until after FNAF 1 has happened (the suits cannot be effectively dismantled until the first game's guard has finished his week). This creates a feedback loop. What I've done to smooth out this wrinkle is to suggest that the last phone call is an amalgam of cut-paste words/phrases based on previous things Phone Guy had said prior to his death, which is possible with '90's/early 2000's tech, depending on when we believe the FNAF 1 pizzeria closed its doors  
\- Henry being in the office is an artistic choice. Most people believe that canonically it is Michael, but if we assume Henry is the one in the office instead, things hit much closer to home when we consider he managed to try AND FAIL at burning William to death once before  
\- When Molten Freddy appears in FNAF 6, it is listed as an amalgam of different forms of Remnant, and the only way to destroy Remnant is through fire. William crushed the endoskeletons in the prior segment, rendering them useless; this does not, however, guarantee peace for the children. While the Marionette can offer peace via the Happiest Day minigame, the crushed skeletons were former parts for the Toy series, which I've argued became the Funtime series; this justifies the Phantom animatronics in FNAF 3 as haunting Henry/William, and allows for the majority of their spirits to disappear in the minigame. Coincidentally, this also explains the Marionette's corporeal appearance in FNAF 3, as it is physically following William to mitigate his murderous rampage (at least, in my head that's why)  
\- The recording at the end of this segment comes from FNAF 6's Insanity ending; whether or not it is canon matters little to me, aside from the fact that I can use it in this context as a reason for establishing the sixth-game's location AND to justify how/why Henry knows "the depth of the depravity" of his former friend. A fitting bookend, considering Henry being in the office isn't canon  
_

_That should be everything...and I think that's my time. Back soon. -Brale_


	14. Chapter 14

**_Had a chunk of this written four days ago, but then my computer ate it, so I had to reconstruct it. This is the final chapter of this story._**

* * *

**Afton**

**Chapter 14**

**20XX**

William staggered, feeling his legs groaning under the strain of moving in the open atmosphere. The cover of darkness helped him, and his thirst for blood had only grown more overpowering as he'd wandered. Thus it was with wonder and some confusion that he'd come back, back to the former home of Fredbear's Family Diner; the call had been too strong to ignore. The long-dead franchise had been revived, and he'd be damned if he didn't get to see it in person.

He briefly searched the exterior of the building for some form of purchase, but aside from barging through the front doors that evening, the only other entry point seemed to be a discreet door beside the trash cans in the alley between the Pizza Place and the next-door nail salon. William slumped beside the garbage, certain he'd been called for a reason.

The night got darker. Hours passed. The door burst open and a handful of large, dark humanoid figures stepped into the alleyway, hoisting his limp body into the pizzeria and strapping him to a wooden chair in a room lit by a single incandescent bulb over his head. Before him sat a wooden desk, a tape recorder, and a clipboard with some papers on it: various boxes and lines filled the paper, nothing he could see clearly from his vantage point.

A few moments passed before a door at the far end of the dark room opened, briefly illuminating the linoleum checkerboard floor, before a figure stepped through and closed the door once more. The man sat down on the chair across the table with a grunt, his face obscured by the halo of light. He pressed the Play button on the tape recorder.  
"Before you is an animatronic found in the back alley."

William almost moved out of reflex. He should've guessed Henry's voice would come from the device; the man had, after all carried a similar one out of the burning building from months ago.

"We are...unsure...of its origins. It is your job to complete the maintenance checklist before claiming it as 'salvage'; or, if you choose to, you can throw it back into the alley where you found it and forfeit payment. Please make your choice now."

The tape continued to play with a dull hiss; the man across the table picked up a pencil and the clipboard.

"You have chosen to proceed with the maintenance checklist. Remember: use your company-issued taser to return the animatronic to a neutral state if you feel that it's becoming unstable or aggressive."

William again resisted the urge to lunge at the tape. He'd gone from the one giving the shocks to the one receiving them.

"You can only use it three times before it begins to damage the animatronic and decrease its value."

A brief respite.

"Begin audio prompt in three...two...one."

An odd grinding sound coupled with something akin to the warble of a fan's blades began echoing from the tape deck. Involuntary though it was, his servos tightened, preparing to move in spite of the warning about the taser.

"Document results."

The man flipped the clipboard up, obscuring his view from William; William in turn flicked his head up, attempting to see the man better while relieving the tension in his joints. The man made a mark on the clipboard, then lowered it with a gasp.

"Begin audio prompt in three...two...one."

The strange pulsing returned, surging William's motors. He prepared to move again without warning, his vision went blank and he felt his motors spasm before he slumped back into the chair, void of any servo tension. He felt the circuits in his brain processing the violent electric shock, rebooting his system as fast as possible. The noise resumed almost immediately after he'd regained his bearings, restoring tension to his servos once again.

"Document results."

William twitched upright once more after the man had lifted the clipboard. The man across the table cleared his throat as the slate lowered back to the table.

"Begin audio prompt in three...two...one."

The grinding had become more of a beating, much like a helicopter's blades, charging the air with energy. William once again felt anxious to move.

"Document results."

Once again, the man lifted the clipboard. Once again, William twitched, fully upright and facing the man, ready to lunge across the table and be free of the maddening sounds.  
His body convulsed again, slamming back and forth against the chair until he fell limp once more; the second taser shot was far worse than the first, as he couldn't locate the motors in his hips until well after his system rebooted and recalibrated his tolerances.

"Begin audio prompt in three...two...one."

The beating, grinding noise was back. In addition to motor tension, now William felt unbridled rage. The sounds were aggravating, and the man across the table seemed to have a callous disregard for his actions.

"Document results."

The slate came up; William sat all the way up, leaning forward toward the man, ready to snap his neck and end the torture. The slate lowered to the table.

"Begin audio prompt in three...two...one."

William was slammed against the table, then backward into the chair; smoke had begun issuing from his eye sockets as the circuits in his brain attempted to overcome the discharge once again. The manacles on his upper arms had begun smoking too, visible char marks carved into the plastic casing of his suit while the rotting flesh beneath sizzled from the jolt. He remained limp as the tape resumed.

A long, slow grinding replaced the beating of the blades, the faint sound of the carousel and the Toreador March echoing from a distance behind the main ambience. William found himself taken back to his time working with the animatronics, before the children had become his focus, before he'd lost Elizabeth to Henry's machine.

"Document results."

The slate rose and fell for the final time. William remained slumped in the chair.

"You have completed the maintenance checklist. You may proceed with the salvage. Well done. End tape."

The man stood up, pushing his chair back. William heard the footsteps begin to cross the room and forced himself to speak with his rough, disused voice.

"What a deceptive calling."

The footsteps stopped.

"I knew it was a lie the moment I heard it, obviously..."

He sat upright in the chair, still under the light, gaze trained to where the steps had frozen their movements.

"...but it is intriguing nonetheless."

The man skittered from the room; the light cut out not long after. William felt the shadowy figures from before release his restraints and heft him out of the room, tossing his limp body into what appeared to be a storage room of sorts. The room itself was small, and how they'd managed to fit his body into such a space was a feat unto itself, but he remained limp until well after they'd left him. The darkness had begun to drip snippets of light into his vision, and he realized that the storage room was, in fact, a ventilation system.

Still, the shocks had distorted him enough that he fell into a useless stupor, content to lie in the vent until the sound of children echoing elsewhere in the building woke him.  
He crawled off to find them, confident he would finally have more experiments to conduct with remnant.

None of his attempts to find the children had been fruitful, and he found himself stuck in the vents once the lights had gone out and the patrons had gone home. The children had all seemed to congregate in one room at a time, all together, and moved from room to room without any sort of reason or pattern, but William had lurked in the shadows above, hoping to snatch one if it straggled. In the darkness, however, he heard something else that piqued his interest.

"You don't know who your employer is...do you?"

_Circus Baby? Elizabeth? HERE?!_

He'd seen a dilapidated silver bear slinking around the vents once or twice, one with the voice of Funtime Freddy, but he'd made a point to avoid it when possible; it, too, seemed to be attracted to the noises of children. Now, for Elizabeth to be here...something interesting was definitely afoot.

The next day brought more children to chase, more animatronics to avoid, and additional noises throughout the vents that confused him. Strange sounds of machines whirring, buttons clicking, and a fan blowing air off in the ducting somewhere were all met with a blinding light pointed straight at his face, no matter how he tried to enter the suspicious room. He'd turned away every time, but the room was no less suspicious than he'd been led to believe over his two-day tenure.

That night, he heard yet another voice:

"Shhhh."

Not one which he recognized, but one which had now joined him. There were four now.

They all seemed to have agreed on the basic principle of avoiding each other in the vents, but between the sounds of the children and the odd electronic sounds in the suspicious room, they had plenty with which to keep busy the next day. William almost collided headlong with the new black bear, so dark was it that it almost blended in with the vent, but he nonetheless failed to find the children that day.

And the next day was much the same. He was beginning to get irked at having been brought here by such a calling, only to not be capable of getting his hands on more experiment fodder.

Except that the end of the day had drawn a change from Elizabeth.

"You played right into our hands," she said. "Did you really think that this job just fell out of the sky for you?"

_She must be talking to the man from the table_. William slid through the vents, drawing closer to Baby's voice.

"No."

The venom in her voice was palpable.

"This was a gift...for us."

William found her, in the vent just outside the suspicious room, tucked inside and gazing toward the room without care for his presence.

"You gathered them all here in one place...just like he asked you to."

_Henry? Henry had wanted the children? Why?_

"All of those little souls in one place. Just for us! A gift."

William felt a growl rising in his throat. The thought that Henry had finally come to his view of things, finally felt that remnant was worth pursuing, seemed the greatest gift of all.

"Now we can do what we were created to do...and be complete. I will make you proud, daddy."

_You already have, my dear._

"Watch."

And he did.

"Listen."

And he did.

"And be full-"

A loud beep sounded.

"Connection terminated."

_Henry._

"I'm sorry to interrupt you, Elizabeth, if you still even remember that name. But I'm afraid you've been misinformed. You are not here to receive a gift, nor have you been called here by the individual you assume, although you have, indeed, been called."

_The individual you assume? Did she think...I called her here?_

"You have all been called here."

William could feel the other animatronics in the vents, their attention rapt and focused on the echoing voice of his former friend.

"Into a labyrinth of sounds and smells, misdirection and misfortune. A labyrinth with no exit, a maze with no prize. You don't even realize that you are trapped."

William felt something in his circuits snap. He began crawling back toward the storage room.

"Your lust for blood has driven you in circles, chasing the cries of children in some unseen chamber, always seeming so near, yet somehow out of reach."

It had all been a lie. A vicious, conniving lie.

"But you will never find them; none of you will."

William found, to his dismay, that the storage room was no longer; instead, a grate had been put up, blocking his access to the room. He flailed for a moment, diving back into the vent to find another way out.

"This is where your story ends."

William found a door in one of the rooms, reinforced and with only a small, slotted window running vertically near one of its edges. He began slamming his body against the door.

"And to you, my brave volunteer, who somehow found this job listing not intended for you: although there was a way out planned for you, I have a feeling that's not what you want. I have a feeling that you are...right where you want to be."

Laughter echoed through the vent. "I did say I would come find you, did I not...father?"

_Michael?!_ Michael had been the one in the suspicious room the whole time?! _But why?!_

"I am remaining as well. I am nearby."

If William could only smash through the door and get out of the heat, he might be able to find the bastard who'd caged him in the vents and finally get some answers.

"This place will not be remembered, and the memory of everything that started this can finally begin to fade away, as the agony of every tragedy should."

The door refused to budge.

"And to you monsters trapped in the corridors: be still, and give up your spirits. They don't belong to you."

William continued slamming against the door, but the plastic on his body had begun to soften, and each blow did less to move the door than the previous.

"For most of you, I believe there is peace and perhaps more, waiting for you after the smoke clears."

Parts of his shell began to crumble from his decaying form, the heat climbing steadily. He beat his arm and head against the door.

"Although for one of you, the darkest pit of hell has opened to swallow you whole, so don't keep the devil waiting, old friend."

William slumped against the door. That fucking maniac had doomed them both to die in the fire.

"My daughter, if you can hear me, I knew you would return as well."

_His daughter? Charlotte?_

"It's in your nature to protect the innocent."

_When had Charlie come back?_

"I'm sorry that on that day, the day you were shut out and left to die, No one was there to lift you up into their arms the way you lifted others into yours."

William slid to the floor. The Puppet animatronic. The spider-like creation that had fled the diner after he'd snapped Charlie's neck. It must have bonded to her remnant.

That explained the stuffed bodies in the suits: the children he'd murdered who had mysteriously disappeared must have been suited by the Puppet.

That explained seeing it everywhere in his dreams, his nightmares t

he day he became fused to the Spring Bonnie animatronic

his time in the horror attraction

the black bear with the striped endoskeleton.

"And then, what became of you? I should have known you wouldn't be content to disappear. Not my daughter."

That bear had been Charlie the whole time, stalking the vents with him, looking for children to...save? Protect? Or perhaps it was there to keep him in check?

"I couldn't save you then."

The heat was rising.

"So let me save you now."

The last of William's plastics had melted into a semi-liquid gel, his mummified organic remains sizzling in the heat as the metal endoskeleton's temperature rose to match the heat of the fire.

"It's time to rest, for you and for those you have carried in your arms."

William felt his bones and tissue crisp away, the tattered remains of his once-human body catching fire as the building blazed around him. His circuits were shutting down from the heat; he'd lost the will to move.

"This ends, for all of us."

He slumped to the floor, his organic brain catching fire as the circuits in his head began to pop.

"End communication."

* * *

_**A/N: **__As I said above, I originally had the first chunk of this written four days ago, but my laptop did something "fun" and ate the document, so I had to rebuild it. This is a slightly different version to what I'd originally written, but they're functionally the same._

_Things to consider:  
\- I rewatched Markiplier's playthough of FNAF 6 to see the salvaging happen once more; the above-listed movements and taser strikes are the same as those in his run. No, I did not include his characterization in the story; he isn't the "main character" in any of the FNAF games' lore, after all  
\- We never get a clear indicator that the undead Purple Guy (here Michael) from FNAF SL is the same character in FNAF 3 and FNAF 6, but I've already swapped Henry in for FNAF 3. I felt it fitting to bring Michael back for this one because he is the only "missing piece" not included in this mess; James, being stuffed into a Freddy suit, would have potentially been used as spare parts for the animatronics and may have become part of the messy amalgam crushed in Chapter 12  
\- There is no indication that the FNAF 1 animatronics were "destroyed" according to either the FNAF 3 minigames or my interpretation of the lore; I used a cardboard crusher (hydraulic press) to mangle the animatronics beyond use, but that does NOT mean they are "free;" also, the endoskeletons from the Toy series, which became the Funtime series and then Molten Freddy, have a minimum of TEN souls melded to them: Suzie's dog, the Core 4 (who were used as spare parts), and the second Missing Children's Incident victims from FNAF 2's "Save Them" minigame. Golden Freddy is not a part of this mess, as his suit lacks an endoskeleton (it having been used to rebuild Michael) and was thus never used for parts; this also explains the whole UCN "trapped in hell" theory of being haunted by Golden Freddy/Fredbear. What I propose for the "Happiest Day" minigame is that the souls were vindicated and PARTIALLY released; their remains were part of the Funtime/Molten series of animatronics, and any leftover remnant in the FNAF 1's crusher could easily have been relocated to Molten Freddy's possession by Henry if necessary  
\- Ideally, the game would've made the room/vent distinction clearer, as I find it difficult to believe that the animatronics, despite their blood lust, would have chased a small diamond-shaped wheeled robot that makes noises reminiscent of children's cries. They may be all kinds of fucked up, but they wouldn't be totally irrespective of their surroundings. I've opted for a somewhat-hybridized approach to this and made the vents/rooms interchangeable because the RASC realistically only works if the animatronics are trapped in vents above its path of travel. Remember that they have no access to the "pizzeria" that exists in the center as the tycoon portion of the game; it is still debatable whether or not the tycoon portion actually happened (or if it was just an elaborate hoax to keep Michael engaged for the week), which is why I neglected to write about it and instead focused on my typically Will-centered story  
_

_I think that's everything? I've probably missed something. There aren't really any continuity errors or problems with the lore for this game, as this was intended to be the game that ended the series. It's not as bittersweet writing this as it was running through the final game, but this also means that this story has come to its close. Feel free to continue commenting/suggesting things; I'll be around. _

_I think that's my time. Later, kids. -Brale_


End file.
